


And If You Want Another Kind

by AceQueenKing



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Arguing, Blow Jobs, Breathplay, Complicated Relationships, Cunnilingus, F/M, Femdom, Healing, Impregnation, Jealousy, Pegging, Penis In Vagina Sex, Post-Canon, Semi-Public Quickie, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 04:38:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21470191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Persephone decides, mid-July, that she's well and truly ready to see her man, and, more importantly, well and truly ready to take the reigns in their relationship, so to speak.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 147
Collections: Femdom Exchange 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bittersnake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersnake/gifts).

> Apologies that this is a super late gift. "Should only be 1K," I thought, starting this -- my planning, alas, is always bad, and this got away from me, and erm, happy Femdom exchange? And/or apologies, as this is so late! I hope you enjoy it anyway!
> 
> The Title is from Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man":  
_If you want a father for your child_  
_Or only want to walk with me a while_  
_Across the sand_  
_I'm your man_  
_If you want a lover_  
_I'll do anything you ask me to_  
_And if you want another kind of love_  
_I'll wear a mask for you_

Persephone snorts, watching the first springtime rain drench down a lot of winter fields. She is a woman half blessed and half cursed in that she is the only woman in the pantheon whose work isn’t instantaneous, 'sides her very own Mama: she looks at these fields, sorry fields, tiny things without a sprout of seed, on account of her husband’s capriciousness, and she thinks _well, we have got a lot of work to do._

It’s not quite fair, but Persephone rolls up her sleeves, even as she gripes. Everyone else’s got their stories, it’s just this one is hers. Now, it might grate a bit that everyone else’s stories, their heroic tales, their romances – it only takes a minute to make a hero, to fall in love with a god, to come together or to fall apart. Persephone’s story ain’t never been no split-second tale, though; it’s a slow, slow siege, so slow that even when she’s thinking it’s finally feast-time instead of famine, here comes Scarcity and Adversity, running down on that train with its high lonesome call. Sometimes figuratively, mind; lately, mostly literally – mind that, too.

She thinks about that train, which has, at least, remained outside her earshot, and maybe it rains a little harder down on her wet spring night.

Now rain or shine, upstairs or down, Persephone is and always has been a woman given to drownin' her sorrows. Always has trended a bit low, her Ladyship of the Upside Down and Sometimes the Rightside Up too; Mama never could quite shake her frown and marrying Mr. Dark-and-Deep didn’t help chase those blues away, and neither does a little nip in her most treasured flask, no matter how much she keeps hoping it might. Poor little Persephone, never quite belonged no matter where her wind blows; spring’s a melancholy thing, anyway, she thinks. Always rain that brings the flowers, ain’t it so?

She lets it rain. April showers, after all.

It’s a seasonal pattern Persephone knows well, the rains just a part of her dance with Mr. Upside-Down, Mr. Death-Destroyer-Destruction. It’s as inevitable as death and taxes both, as he is himself, and ain’t that just the crux of it. They’ve got their ways and their means of which this is but the first: this will become a springtime shower of hesitant sniping, a summer of too brief sunshine-silence, a fall that explodes into passionate arguing, and, finally, a winter chill blowing the cold wind of buried resentments.

Wasn’t always that way – used to be the falls and winters weren’t so fallow if you catch her drift, and that’ll be something she’ll mutter under her breath in their little arguments when she waltzes by him, just low enough only he can hear her, and she’ll hear the fates humming _any way the wind blows_ in the back of her mind. If she sucks in her conscience and plants a jealous kiss on his unmovable lips in response, well, then, ain’t no one who can complain, down there, about her downright contemptible morals. Her word is law second only to his and he’s never been so bitter to her that he doesn’t want her to sweeten him up with her sugar, so to speak. They still love one another, deep down, underneath it all; even if they’ve forgotten how to do it right.

Now in the old days – which are, to say, days that are sepia-toned in her mind, but not the simple black and white of her girlhood; their days go back a long ways, and as such old days cover a great deal of ground – it used to be easier to ignore the wrongness of his little lean-tos and his blinding lights and his decrepit tomb-towns; put a few drinks in her belly and she’d focus on just her-self for once, just Persephone _her-self_, and sooner or later she’d pull himself by his own starched collar from his own shantytown to _their_ very own, long-abandoned bed and bring an early Spring thaw, rockin’ back and forth on the unyielding hardness that is himself.

In every way, mind, he is _unyieldingly_ hard; hard man to love, a man made of iron, but love him she does, even if she’s had to kill herself and bring herself back to life to do it sometimes.

A green sprout bursts up from the ground; progress, of a sort. She’s careful not to squish it under her foot, not like how she wants to do to him, sometimes.

She might be up for two months already, but two months without him means two months to dwell on him without himself interrupting, so she dwells well and truly _good_ on the old days, both good and not-so-good. Back then, in those good but not-so-good days that were old but not _that_ old, the drugs and the booze worked enough, and she could focus on feeling only his pleasure in the slow grunt of his lips, the heat of his mouth at her throat; feel his immortal hands at her hips and _know_ he found his hallelujah in the high-and-mighty pant of her cries, the slick-telling wetness of her thighs. Was a time long past when they could do that, when their foundation was rotting, but he still knew her as intimately as his own body and his own self and familiarity gave their world some badly needed structure. ‘Course even then there were resentments; be easier if he didn’t descend into madness every time she’s been gone more than ten steps from his august presence and of course, she is a saint in as such she has had to hear his eternal complaint of his ever-lasting loneliness, _lover I was so lonely, _every time she returns, which at this rate is more times than she can count.

But it was better, then. In those days that were bad but not-so-bad; sepia days, still tinged a little golden even if they were a bit dirty.

But it got worse.

It went bad so gradually Persephone ain’t even sure when the bountiful years went to sparse years and the sparse years went to bad years and then bad went to outright blight and famine. The Blight only crashed in last year, the year he brought that pretty little girl down, _Eurydice_, tragic little snake-bitten bride-child, and plastered Persephone in the girl’s comely looks: her pretty hair, her bright young skin, her clear-eyed _sobriety_. Was obvious what he wanted; wanted her to hate the girl, and love him. Well, Persephone pitied the girl, and _hated_ him. He’d leered and loosened his tie, and Persephone went and got herself good and drunk, and she might have thought it was the end then, that he would introduce that girl to the pomegranate tartness of Mr. Hades’ ways, but it wasn’t the end, not at all. The boy came, and sang his song, and Hades, the unyielding and unyielded, the brick wall between the Heavens and the Hells, tumbled down, and took her hand, and offered her his love in a brick-red carnation that she clutched all the way back up to heaven.

And that one year of blight gave way to a new spring field, the one under her feet just now.

But the problem is, of course, that a new field can go in many ways. Too much planting, and you’ll choke the vines; too little tending, and the weeds run rampant. Now nobody upstairs nor down will say one word on them, offer not one word of advice or naysaying in their direction; everyone is just prayin’ maybe they’ll be a little more good this year than bad, that Persephone won’t frost Mama’s begonias before November-like and that he himself won’t be tearing down his august sister’s erstwhile peacock garden with a chilling wind come August, so they say, so they say.

Not to her, but she hears. The thing about being the drunk in the corner is no one expects Persephone to remember, but she remembers.

Always had a mind like a steel trap. Jaws like one, too, and her feelings for he himself are a confusing maelstrom of new growth that she sees echoed in what she plants. Little known fact but Persephone herself ain’t exactly all light, any more than he’s all dark; mother of the Venus flytrap, the cape sundew, and the sun pitcher, too, that’s Our Lady, who gives us poison and medicine both, the sweet-morphine drip of the dying and the blessed antibiotics of the saved-souls, hallowed be her name and Halle-fuckin’-lujah. She spends her spring and, now that he is of a mind to let her have one, for once, summer, sortin’ out feelings that are at best described as complex and at worst described as a _fucking_ _mess_. She sips her beer lighter than usual and doesn’t go for the hard stuff so much on account of wanting to keep her mind more warm than fuzzy. Hermes’ eyes twinkle at her over his bar and she very kindly tells him, non-verbally, to go twinkle somewhere else, because she’s _occupied_.

And he himself, Mr. Flower-man, Mr. Death, Mr. Big-and-Strong, well, he don’t make one little peep. Seems he is _occupied_, too.

Because that’s the other thing about Mr. Hades’ ways, he who is almighty and all-consuming: he is a silent hunter. A woman don’t hear him until he damn well intends her to, and he being as quiet as he is in all things, she is not liable to hear from old man winter until such time as he decides to bring his frosty self crawling up from the ground to claim his time. He will come when he is ready, and it won’t matter what she thinks of the matter, except in as much as he knows her preferences are to have her time to do her work and perhaps if she is very lucky he will honor her preferences.

She is very, very tired of running on his stopwatch.

She has no power over him; has no power at all, as to what he chooses. Always been him who is the man holding out a hand, she who is the girl who takes it. He holds the watch, and he always seems to keep winding it a bit fast. She hates it.

She doesn’t really trust, at first, that he will let her have such times as she so pleases. Times being what they are, and all, and things so tender; doubt comes in, and picks at the bones of all the best intentions. But as March drifted into April and he seemed quiet, and April passes quietly too, and May also passes without incident, and Persephone, well, maybe more than fool’s hope burns up in her belly.

Course, it is only rightly then that Persephone, who has been so focused upon her own means and her own man, takes a while to notice that the boy never has come back to the bar since that fateful day he went way down under the ground. Or at least, if he did come on back, he sure ain’t here anymore. She doesn’t ask about that in May, don’t ask in June either; in her family, you don’t ask questions. Don’t ask why, don’t ask when, never nothing but trouble comes of that and they all know it. She wants to think maybe he took his girl somewhere nicer, maybe he ran off with her, maybe they’re happy, maybe there’s a sweet story those two have somewhere else.

But Persephone, she who is the Ends of the Mean, and the Means of the End, knows that the alternate outcome is all too likely. Every lover winds up downstairs in her cellar eventually.

Everyone but herself and himself, of course. Which brings her back to thoughts of him, and his ways, and how he ain’t even sent a damn calling card, or a plea for a phone call, or a single word, and that occupies her up until July, when she drinks just a bit too much moonshine on a hot summer day, when Apollo and Mama burn down the sky with a zeal they ain’t shown in a long age, and when she finally opens her big mouth and unleashes the sword of Damocles straight upon her immaculately coiffed curls.

“Brother,” she says, splashing just a bit a whiskey, for bravery, understand, brother, _bravery_; she’s been makin' an effort to avoid the harder stuff. “Whatever happened to your musician boy, and his girl?”

The look on Hermes’ face – Hermes is a messenger and a subtle one, one who will give you the inference and the plain – is nothing good. The look says Persephone should not have asked. His eyes go down, lips disappearing into the craggy lines of his mouth as he sighs, soft and not-a-bit-sweet.

“A love song, and a tragedy,” he says, and leaves it at that.

“You escort them back?” She asks, and tries to hide the curiosity in her voice, but oh she is _curious_, wouldn’t she like to see Hades’ face when those two lovebirds came tumbling down, or was it only one bird that crashed out of that bush? And just who, exactly, went tromping through their chance and ruined it, weren’t the task so easy and so fine, just a few steps, just a few steps of trust for love to see ya through? Just a few steps, just a few precious steps.

Too much. Trust, hardest thing to hold to, she thinks; especially if you were a woman who had been burned. Alike there, her and that little bird.

“The girl, yes,” he says, delicate; leaves her another drink, a beer with a chaser this time, cuz Hermes is a wise man and her brother knows when he’s breaking bad news. “Now him, I told him to wait, but…He didn’t. Moved out and up into the world, he did. We’ll meet again, I’m sure. Someday.” Of course they will, of course they will, soon as old Orpheus slips his coin for the final way down into Hermes’ palm. Hermes’ downcast eyes suggest he knows damn well that’s as soon as is likely.

She pounds the whiskey back first, firey-hot, and makes a little snarl that she tries to pass off as reacting to the burn. “To the house?”

“His office,” Hermes says; he raises one brow, then says, all quiet like, so she knows he is doing her a favor, because Hermes, that’s what he deals in, favors; _any way the wind blows_, that’s where the messenger goes. “Seemed like business to me, sister.”

“Himself is always business,” she says, though he isn’t, really, not at _that_. Quiet perhaps, but when his attention is on you, it is _on_ you. Persephone has always been a little bit of the jealous type – she grew up in a household with a single Mama, and an absent daddy with a million children aside, Hermes being one of the better ones, and she knows how things go in the family. There’s a lot of love there, but most of it isn’t for spouses.

And so, she burns. She ain’t angry at the girl – isn’t that little girl’s fault, not a bit, she’d do the same were she in such a situation – but that don’t mean she has to _like it_.

Hades’ silence feels less-so lettin’ her be and more-so lettin’ himself be forewarned; if he has seen the children fail, she knows what hope he has that himself and herself can make it through the rough patch will crash down like his walls, brick by brick. Doubt comes in, and hope flies out.

Hades, he has _never_ been one to believe things without evidence. Empirical data is his god, yes, even gods have somebody or something to pray to, brother. For him, it’s data, it’s _proof_, it’s precedent.

For her, it’s a vodka tonic.

She likes herself a good vodka tonic, and just about all vodka tonics are good. Vodka’s a great invention of the little humans: odorless, colorless, as inoffensive as water but with a good burn afterwards that lets you know it’s not_ just_ water that’s going down; the tonic adds just a bit of bittersweetness. Life’s like that, she’s found, the Patroness of Plenty: life’s all disappointment and celebration, and sometimes mixes of the two. 

She prays, that night. Prays good and long and sips six vodka tonics down her gullet, _gulp gulp gulp_. Persephone likes to pray, she does. Ain’t a relapse, brother, it’s a religious experience. Hermes watches her with regretful eyes; he don’t like that she’s drinking so heavy. Never does, really.

“Sister,” he says, when she motions for a seventh. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“Ain’t gonna kill me.” She licks at her sixth glass with a brazenness that sober Persephone, that rare unicorn, would find a bit _embarrassing_, but that Persephone ain’t home right now and honestly, she’s been gone so long the room Persephone keeps in her soul for sober Persephone is getting downright dirty and full of cobwebs. “And it does keep me from killing _him_.”

He’s silent for a long moment after that, but he serves her a tonic – he’s dialed down the vodka, but only a bit.

“Makin’ it watered down still counts as interference,” she shouts, drunkenly. He shrugs and serves other patrons; he doesn’t like it when she gets loud. No one likes it when she gets loud but Persephone herself, and Persephone at least feels a little better when she’s muttering to herself. Himself and herself, that’s true of both of them: he mutters, and she mutters, and sometimes they spend all night staring at one another and muttering up all the reasons they hate one another while miserably loving one another too much to throw away that whole package.

Real _messy_, her and him.

She misses him.

She wonders what he’s doing, as she only allows herself to do after she’s had what drunk Persephone sardonically calls her _religious experience_. She thinks about him and wonders just what he’s _doin’_: hard at work, nose to the grindstone, oh yes, singlehandedly pursuing his goals with a heavy hand? Or is he at play, thrumming his little love-song in his throat for that pretty little songbird? Does she sing for him? Does he find it sweet? She growls again, orders again. She’ll drink ‘til she scrambles enough of her cellular matter so she ain’t gotta think that thought again. Jealous, she is.

She understands her big mean stepma, this year.

She drinks another couple drinks; mixes it up this time, gets winter-weight whiskey instead of vodka, and by _gets_ she means she sneaks a few drinks out of her lucky flask because Hermes has well and truly given up on her, is avoiding her loud calls for the barkeep. This isn’t for the religious connection; this drinking is for of a more personal nature, gathering up a bit of his ghost on her lips.

“Hermes!” She shouts again; the bar is filling up, and it goes quiet at the sound of her bellowing, because Persephone is queen of Hell and she is Full of Religion right now, so full of it she can feel her daddy’s lightning rubbing through her palms. She wants to cause trouble. She wants to make a scene. She wants _him_. Hermes looks at her and she motions for a pencil and looks for paper. “Gimme – gimme something to write with.”

“What?” He looks at her like she’s crazy; she probably is. She’s got a tough life for the god damn queen of a third of the cosmos and accounting on her difficult marriage, it would be little surprise if she snapped.

“Pencil! Pen! Whatever!” She grabs one of his cocktail napkins; it’s a dainty thing for such a run-down little drinking joint, with goldish trim on the sides. He always likes gold trim, her man; taste as gaudy as new money, himself, and ain’t that a tragedy. No accounting for taste. “Wanna write – write himself a message.”

“You sure that’s a good idea in your state?” Hermes asks; she shoots him a _look_ and he does as she asks because Persephone, well – she’s used to getting her way. Advantages of being loud, being stubborn. She shimmied her behind straight onto a throne, did you know that, brother? Had nothing to her but her country bumpkin charms and she made herself a Queen.

“I think I do what I want in whatever state I want to do as such.” She stares at the napkin, debates; himself being an unobliging sort, invitations to lure him top-side require a certain hand, a certain seductive technique. She wants to write _have you been pounding yourself into that little quim_ but what she writes is, instead, _I miss you_. _Let’s start over. _She wants to write _do you like her taste better than mine_ but what comes out instead is _meet me at Hermes’ little hole in the wall tomorrow. You know where and when._ What she wants to write is _I want to inhale your face_ and what she writes is – well, what she writes is _I want to inhale your face_ because Hades is a lot of things but subtle has never been in the top ten of his attributes.

She messily shoves the napkin towards Hermes who looks at her, then looks at the message she has jotted out.

“This is…” He presses his lips into a frown. “Why don’t you wait ‘‘til tomorrow to send this?”

“Give it to him now,” she snarls. “Tired of waiting.”

Quiet, Hermes says: “It’s only July.”

“Well,” she says, “seems to me that’s later than last year.” Sober Persephone would have protested and said she wasn’t going to go down with him, but Drunk Persephone, she’s more honest with herself. Truthfully, it seems just as likely she will as she won’t. Give her another ten vodka tonics and it ought to at least stun her conscience, at least for a little bit. She wants to go down a lil’ bit early this year anyway; wants to find out herself if he’s makin’ a right fool of her or if he’s staying true and suffering for it.

She wants him to suffer more than a little bit, and debates if this is nice as she licks at her flask. She decides after about ten seconds of sucking out the last bit of his whiskey that it doesn’t matter if it is nice; he’s never been particularly nice anyway. Or cared if she were, herself. She wants his loyalty. She wants him to remember who he married. She wants _him_.

He folds up the message, puts it in his pocket. “You sure you don’t want to reconsider?” He says in a voice that all but screams _you should reconsider_. “Ain’t just you riding on this whole balance, sister.”

“I’ve earned a time or two to be selfish,” she says, and he shoots her a filthy look. She just raises an eyebrow and looks back. Sober Persephone might have mumbled sorry, but Drunk Persephone is all about defending herself. And her rights. She’s sacrificed six months in either direction since she was old enough to marry him, which was truthfully not old at all, not at all, and she’s earned – earned the right. She has. She _has. _Take all you can get and make the most of it, right? Who could blame her for wanting to save her marriage? What a marriage it is.

“You’re the messenger,” she says. “So fly on down and away.”

He looks at her for a long moment, with a heavy glance. She smiles, and ain’t one thing nice about it.

“Go on,” she says. “I’ll watch the bar.”

And she knows it is a testament to how much Hermes loves her that he tosses the keys toward her with a long sigh, and starts his trip down toward that station, the one that only has one termination, and that termination being the only one that much matters. She watches the bar, is even good about it, she is, and only steals herself a couple of refreshments as payment. Doesn’t even take the expensive stuff.

* * *

She wakes up the next morning with a pounding headache and a barely remembered promise. _Fuck_. She looks at herself in the mirror, brushes her teeth something good, but doesn’t really get that grimy feeling out. Looks in the mirror: her face looks swollen, and her eyes are swollen too, and she ain’t sure if that’s from the drink or the worrying that caused it, or the long crying jag that started somewhere after locking up the bar thinking about himself and that pretty little canary – she could never drink enough to displace the image – and ended sometime before she fell asleep, though she is not certain when. She looks old, she thinks; can see a few lines starting to form there, which is saying something on someone so eternally young as she herself has always been. Not that he hasn’t aged in their relationship; he was always older but was a time when he had a head full of dark brown hair, and now his skullcap is white as snow. She tries to smile into the mirror; fails. Persephone, as always, is trending a bit lower in her moods.

Mama don’t even look at her when she goes out to the fields, not at first; Mama’s version of coping with her drinking has been to disapprove of it, in as much as Hades’ decision has been to accommodate it. She misses that part of her winter home, where he lets her keep her absinthe in the toilet tank and purposefully ignores the bottle of washbin gin that mysteriously gets refilled whenever she wanders out to what used to be her garden out back. Mama don’t put up with such in her house, according to that she cares about Persephone’s health more than her happiness.

Mama only very gently says, “Rough night?” when she winds up needing to break to be sick in some wheat fields. Not that it matters if she’s sick; Persephone can’t die, and the crops aren’t aware enough to be offended.

“What night isn’t?” She says.

Mama snorts, and that’s the end of it. Mama has always been a woman of action more than words; sometimes she reminds Persephone of her husband, but that ain’t a truth that can be commented upon as such without either party getting right mad at the comparison.

Hours later, so many hours later that Persephone has gone ahead and forgotten they’ve even talked about the subject, Mama circles back and says: “Why don’t you stay home tonight? Was thinkin' of making some cider.” That cider, Persephone knows, is only offered on account that it was, as a child, her favorite beverage. Persephone has not drunk non-alcoholic cider in forever and an age. Sometimes Mama doesn’t realize that, despite the fact Persephone comes home piss drunk most nights, she is not a child. Sometimes she thinks Mama would prefer she stayed one. Certainly, Mama would have preferred she never tied the knot with Mr. Underground, but that’s mothers for you. Never do approve of their children’s choices.

“Too hot for cider,” Persephone sniffs, all too delicate.

“Water, then,” Mama counters.

“I got plans.” Seph snaps a bit as she threshes wheat; an early harvest, this patch, but if she’s going down tonight, she doesn’t want the people up top to be without. Patroness of Plenty always delivers, even if sometimes it ain’t much.

“Getting drunk in Hermes’ bar,” Mama says, voice thick. Mama’s stubborn as a mule when she wants to be, and again the thought occurs that her Mama and her husband aren’t that different, not that different at all. “Ain’t, as such, plans.”

“Got a date,” she says. Mama’s back goes right still at that, and Persephone’s mouth twists into a little smile, because she knows Mama doesn’t approve and a bit of her, some long-buried, childish, peevish bit of her, is pleased with the thought. Pointless childhood rebellion, perhaps, but she’s never quite outgrown it.

“Who?” Mama asks, very quiet.

“Who do you think?” Mama shakes her head at her, the look on her face expressing her emotions better than words could: _girl, you are being a fool-child_, _and were you a younger girl, I would spank you for your selfishness._ Persephone shrugs it off, as she has shrugged off all her Mama’s criticism. She might not go down. She won’t allow herself to be sober enough to feel guilty if she does.

“You’re playin' with a blizzard,” Mama says, soft, and Persephone just shakes her head, and threshes wheat, over and over and over again, the scythe warm and inviting in her hands. It’s not an unapt comparison; he is old man winter, he is, and an asshole too, and it is just like him to freeze you out when you hunger for his love. Happens so quick you just go down ‘fore you even know you’re frozen. Don’t feel a thing.

Mama doesn’t talk again that afternoon, and Persephone doesn’t feel of the chattering sort either. She leaves a little early to freshen up and tells herself all the nervous butterflies in her belly are due to her anger at Mama, and not because she’s nervous that he might not show. She dresses herself up mighty fine; keeps the green but opts for pure lace, low-cut but not so much so she looks like she’s givin’ the farm away. Her Hades, he likes her lookin’ smart, likes seeing her in all the niceties he can buy: well-cut dresses, flawless jewels, and perfume whose price would make your eyes just water. She pulls on one of his pins, the little pomegranate red ruby, right at her bosom, and spritzes perfume he likes, fancy stuff that smells like roses and ambergris. Turns herself in the mirror, tries to make herself smile, and fails.

Persephone, as always, trends a bit low.


	2. Chapter 2

He ain’t there when she shows up and her heart catches in her throat. Maybe that’s a message all its own, and a mean one at that, a regular nastygram: _I said I’d find someone who appreciates the comforts of a gilded cage, and now I’ve gone and done so._ Her feet stumble and she goes to the bar; her eyes go to Hermes, who looks back at her with a pitying light, and she’s half-relieved her brother gives her his wordless sympathies, and half annoyed, and were she not sober Persephone, she’d pick the latter, bite at the man in front of her since she couldn’t devour the man who wasn’t there. _Who are you_ _to pity me? I’m Queen of Hell, brother,_ drunk Persephone rasps, deep within her belly. _You know my name._ Sober Persephone wishes she had drunk Persephone’s druthers; she’s just sad and scared instead.

“I did deliver it,” he says, stiff; then he hands her a drink, a nice drink, a fancy-ass drink that she knows is way outside of Hermes’ taste. Hermes, like her, prefers the mortal things – lyre strings, cotton home-spun. This thing…this is more _his_ taste, all gilt-edged glass, champagne kisses—and she’s got no doubt it’s the _Good_ Champagne—and a diamond necklace that probably costs more than Hermes' whole bar dunked in the center of it.

“From the Mister. On accounting of his being late.”

She stares at it, mouth sour; it ain’t her favorite but Persephone has never been one to turn down a free drink. She sips at it and ignores the discordant clink of a diamond against her tongue. It’s so very much a drink made of all his faults. Show-off quality, fashionable choice, and so literally absent of thought of her herself that she wants to take it downstairs and garrote himself with the pretty little gift he’s given her. Not enough to take his head off – just enough to make him think her capable of such. “He give a reason for his tardiness?”

“Never does,” Hermes chuffs. He looks at her side-eyed, like he’s tellin’ her something he oughtn’t. “Think there’s been some fire in the mill. Sure he’s puttin’ it out.”

“That girl stationed there?” Oh but she is a jealous bitch, isn’t she? His plan worked, didn’t it _just_, and don’t she just _hate_ that it worked.

“Not to my knowledge,” he says with a shrug. “But I don’t pay attention much, as to what happens once the coin is transferred. Breaks my heart if I dwell on it, sister.”

She snorts. Don’t it just break her heart too and ain’t that half the problem.

“You deliver it to his office?”

“Yes.” He knows what she’s asking, and don’t his hackles feel raised. She looks at the feathers on his sleeves: _rustle, rustle_. He doesn’t like being the bearer of bad news.

“She there?” Never understood ox-eyed Hera so plain, Persephone, as today.

“Not when I was there. Just himself in the office. Sleeves rolled up with ledgers all around. His usual.” She tries to think of the scene; runs her tongue over her lips, distracted. End of the month, she supposes; rare for him to come home then, too busy charting up all his facts and figures. Were she feeling more charitable to him, she’d say the fact he agreed to come up at all at such a time is proof of effort being made. But she isn’t in too much a mood to prove charitable, and besides, he hasn’t even got the grace to be on time or give her her favorite drink.

She sips at the glass again. “He ought to have sent more than one drink. Cheapskate.”

Hermes hesitates, eyes down on the diamond pendant that’s currently ebbing and flowing in her champagne, bubbles clustering around it like some kind of zygote bursting into life. Pity nothing grows from stone. Thinking of that must make something shift on her face though she doesn’t like to think she’s so readable, and Hermes softens, just a bit, but he softens.

“He may have said something about a tab,” he says, with all the hesitance of when he has to tell dad that their step-ma saw him doing _you know what_ with some new _you know who_. Persephone doesn’t like that that Hermes has put her on that level of disaster and sips a bit more of her husband’s inordinately expensive taste in champagne so she doesn’t have to think about that too much.

“Well,” she says, and feels the alcohol working, nice and bubbly on her tongue, oh yeah, that’s the stuff, _that’s_ the _stuff_. “Suppose there are some benefits to marrying money.”

Hermes gives her a look that’s somewhere between concerned and pitying, and she tries to ignore both of them as she drowns her glass within five minutes. She doesn’t bother to remove the necklace – he’ll expect her to wear it, and so she won’t be wearing it when he sees her, all the better to spite him. Then she thinks, wistfully, as Hermes refills the glass, reburying her little bubbly zygote in its pickled womb, maybe she’ll fish it out when he shows up, let him see it wet and glistening, let him watch her string it between her tits—and for her age, she knows she still has _great_ tits—and let him paw at it, let him taste it with his tongue and maybe break it with his teeth because she has always been turned on when he’s a bit aggressive.

Fantasizing helps slow down her drinking a bit, as such that she is only pleasantly buzzed by the time he shows up, an hour late, ink smeared down his hand, or perhaps coal, and she sure hopes he got that from _working_. The bar gets quiet when Death walks in, as it always does; everyone notices and everyone sees, even if they don’t know why they all pick up a bit of a chill. His boots are the loudest thing in the room, she thinks, _clunk clunk_. Big old boots, his boots, one of the few mostly practical things about him, even if he gotta signpost that he’s a rattler with them things. He doesn’t need to. Obvious to anyone he bites and that that bite is plenty fatal.

He folds his glasses into his pocket, sits himself down, but not too close to her, on the other end of the bar itself and she growls at that because he’s _late_, and they don’t have time for _games_, but that’s exactly what he’s signposting he’s intending to play. He raises a glass toward her, so she knows he has seen her, and he knows she has seen him. That’s another mean bone in his body; never allows you to credit anything to ignorance when malevolence is an option. She smiles at him, but it’s a thin smile, a _what-are-you-doing_ smile, a _come-and-kiss-me_ smile.

But he doesn’t. He turns his head to the sign, studies Hermes’ menu with all the intensity of—well, of himself, mainly, debating whether he wants a whiskey sour or a whiskey and water or, in a stunning display of originality, perhaps an old fashioned. Her husband is a plain man, ain’t never the type to deviate from getting what he wants and when he wants it, so she doesn’t know why he bothers to do this. Never been the type to step out of his boundaries, her man.

‘Cept, of course, this previous year.

She wonders if this is what it is between them now, the gulf made in the undoing of his jacket and the loosening of his tie too damn deep for them to cross the divide, and they stare at opposite shores that might as well be as far apart as life and death itself, the boy and his song be damned. And hell, maybe this is just the way they have always been, just two big old crabs on opposite sides of the ocean, trying to embrace without crushing the other in their massive, dangerous claws.

She’s so _tired_ of this bullshit.

She snarls. “Hermes.”

“What are you chatting up the barman for?” He leans over toward her, eyebrow up. “Ain’t you _occupied_? Your date’s here.”

“He’s lost. Bring him a whiskey, two fingers, neat. The nice stuff, get the Macallan off the shelf.” She orders with all the authority of a woman who knows, knows him deep down, knows what he wants and how he wants it. “Put it on his tab.”

Hermes raises an eyebrow, and she just shrugs. “He can afford it, brother. All comes out of the same accounts, in the end.” They’ve never bothered to divorce their finances, on account that that would be a bridge too far toward actually divorcing. He can’t argue she spends too much of their money anyway: ain’t never been the type to spend crazily. Her vodka’s as cheap as it comes, the smoothness of the expensive shit totally unnecessary as to her pleasures and her means. He’s the one more likely to splash the cash; diamonds in her champagne, heavy fur coats for six minutes of winter chill. 

Hermes nods but she can tell he thinks it mighty strange; she sips at her drink and decides she doesn’t care. Nothing about them ever been that conventional, truthfully.

Hades looks up to take the drink, looks over her way when Hermes points, and she does her best to look quite sexy, pushes those nice tits up front-and-center, and shows him she’s still nursing his drink. No need to tell him it’s her third go in this glass. He looks at her, and her glass, a long moment; he looks away into his drink, scribbles something on a napkin and hands it to Hermes.

Hermes looks at him a long moment, and she knows that look, given that she is most often a recipient of it herself: _you-sure-you-wanna-do-this _sort of look. Hades nods, as stubborn as ever, and Hermes plunks it down in front of her and walks away without saying a damn word.

“Hey,” she grouses; “What about service?”

He doesn’t bother to answer, and her stomach flips six times over, because if Hermes is getting out of dodge, and he is, trying to stand as far away from both sides of the bar that she and himself have staked out – what’s in this napkin can’t be a _lick_ of good.

She does her best to look nonchalant as she opens it, even as her heart is thundering so loud she doubts she could even hear the train whistle over it. She sips at her drink to hide her face, and if her flute trembles a bit, well, she’s still skilled enough she don’t spill a drop, not a damn drop.

_Thank you_, it says. And then, _not used to having a pretty lady buy me drinks_.

She looks up, lips pursed. This his play? They screwed things up so bad he wants to play they’re strangers? That starting over, to him, may be something far more literal than she intended? She sips at her drink again, pulls it out so he can see that it’s maybe a lil’ bit empty. Or close to it.

She jots a reply on his napkin, hands it back to Hermes. “Give him that.”

“Are you serious?” He murmurs. “I got a _job_, sister, I don’t have time to run this bullshit 'tween you two.”

“Yeah, well, I got two jobs _and _all this bullshit. Humor me.” She bats her lashes at her husband as Hermes sighs and grabs her message from her hand; Hades looks away, looking at a dance floor she knows he won’t be caught dead on. Shame. His eyes gaze out and she wonders if he finds any of those women attractive; she doesn’t like the thought of it, when a year ago she wouldn’t have cared. His eyes meet the orbs of some girl in a red dress with a tight little ass for half a second. Young little hellraiser; Persephone knows the type, on account of being such herself once upon a time. He looks away. Persephone almost crushes her glass in her palm.

Hermes more or less tosses the napkin toward him and he looks almost bored as he flips it open. He doesn’t mouth the words she’s written—_I’m lonely, lover, and my glass isn't even half-full_—but he does look up at her, something unreadable on his face for half a second that might be considered tenderness, were he himself ever the sort to be tender. Fades fast, but he motions for Hermes, who sighs so loudly she hears it from clear across her side of the bar.

She can’t hear what’s being said, but Hermes ain’t thrilled about it, and Hades insists, the napkin a pointed jab in his fingers, and she should look on the floor to make him jealous but she doesn’t, just keeps her eyes on him. Hades slams the napkin down and Hermes takes it and slams it in front of her. “Last one,” he murmurs. “I mean it, sister, you wanna send a reply please send it yourself. I can’t keep leavin' the mortals high and dry to deal with you two.” There’s a pleading note in his eyes, and she nods, wary.

She flips his little love note open. Can feel his eyes on her all the way across the bar, and she sticks out her chest a little bit more so he sees the little pebbles of her pomegranate pin clear as she reads his message, which is short and to the point.

_Which do you want me to fill? _

Well, ain’t that a bit naughty. She likes it; he’s not blue too often, in his talk, and a man with a voice like his is _built_ for dirty talk. She sips down her drink and sees him watching; she nods. She slowly pulls out his new diamond trinket and licks champagne off the stone at the center. He swallows.

She bends her head down as she hastily puts his newest trinket on; her fingers are getting sticky but she doesn’t care, not one bit, because they’re _working_ and she’s gonna make the most of that and go sit right down next to him right the fuck now and she doesn’t even care that her fingers are sticky because if she’s playing her cards right, a whole lot more of her is gonna get sticky, _real_ _fast_. She hopes he's watching as she puts it on, that he’s got the same venomous desire to run his teeth round her chain. She doesn’t even care that going over to him is technically a surrender; the story always ends that way. He offers a hand, and she comes crawling to him. They've had a lot of times she’s gone after him where things weren’t this good. She’ll make the most of it when they are, and tell herself that she’s got the right to be a little selfish, to enjoy a good year after so many bad ones.

She looks up, smiling, and expects to find him looking at her, hungry as hell. But then her smile fades because, well, he ain’t looking.

He isn't looking at her _at all_.

That red-dressed woman, with her nice hair and her great ass, she’s talking to him. The one who caught his eye on the floor for half a second, _of course_. He ain’t giving this interloper _his_ eyes, mind, but he isn't exactly pushing her off either. She leans over to clasp his hand, his hand with _her_ _wedding ring_, and though he moves it away, Persephone still sees red and not the red of her dress; no, Persephone sees the red of that little lady’s _blood _and thinks the floor would look an awful lot nicer painted in it.

Now were she a bit more drunk, Persephone would probably turn the girl into mulch, storm out the door, steal a bottle of bathtub gin from some moonshiner or another and drink her fill ‘til Apollo burned up her eyelids. And were she a bit more sober, perhaps, she would yell at him, tell him to not just shrug that pretty little thing off but send the message stronger-like. Or maybe she would just mark him primally so everyone knows and everyone sees that the king of the dead belongs to no one but _her_. But Persephone is not so drunk as to be destructive and too sober as to be spiteful, so instead she settles for being just buzzed enough to make trouble.

She hops down off her seat, walks over to her big old husband. “Scuse me,” she says, tapping the woman on the shoulder. “This seat's taken.” And she smiles but there’s nothing nice to it, not at all. It’s a _don’t-mess-with-Texas smile, _a_ walk-away_-_while_-_you_-_still_-_got_-_legs_ smile.

The girl looks at her, sizes her up; Persephone’s explosion of curls, her lace dress, her diamond pendant. Takes a lot of scratch to look as cheap as she does, but the woman isn’t impressed. She’s a fighter, Persephone can tell in the mull of her chin, which is more annoying because fighters with great asses are _exactly_ _his_ _type_. “You're interrupting our conversation.” The interloper plays this brush off cool and turns to look back at him; she expects him to have her back, to tell this crazy broad, that is to say, Persephone, to _buzz off_, but he himself shakes his head.

“It's alright.” He tilts his head toward her. “I was just waiting for my wife.” He holds out a hand toward her on the bar, and she takes it. The girl looks at those hands, clay-brown and stained-pink, joined together, and purses her lips. She knows she’s lost. Persephone glares and wonders if she’ll pretend she didn’t see that ring on his big finger.

“My mistake,” she says, and snakes off into the crowd. Guess that’s a _no_. Persephone grabs her seat while it is still warm and pushes herself next to him. His arm snakes her waist, and she realizes dimly that she’s shaking.

“I'm losin' it.” She mutters. “Used to be a look from me and these chickadees would catch fire. Now they’re gettin' _mouthy_.”

He doesn’t say nothing, not for a long moment, and Persephone, feeling both vulnerable and triumphant, does something that is a bit dumb and a lot forward: she pulls his free hand down low, slides it underneath her skirts. He inhales a tight breath; small tell, but its there. He rubs her knee and damn it all if her knees don’t turn to jelly when he does.

She forgets, at times, just how magnetic his charm is up close, how the deep crags of his old body (and he is old, brother, impossibly old; older than her, even, and she’s pretty damn old) seem to each call to her, like some kind of siren song begging her to wreck herself upon his thighs. Sometimes, she can stuff her ears with cotton, drown him out.

But more often, like tonight, she comes crashing down on his shores, and doesn’t care a whit that her boat’s destroyed.

“What’s a beautiful woman like you doin' in a place like this?” Might be hot as hell itself outside (and Persephone has been, and knows exactly how hot hell is) but there’s not a drop of sweat on that big brow as he leans in, nudges her throat with his mouth, and makes her entire body turn into a quivering mass of jelly. He’s a seductive sort when he wants to be, and Persephone, it turns out, is in the mood to be seduced.

“No games,” she whispers, and he chuckles in her ear, a hot gust of warm air that goes straight down through her, straight down like fire-water, burnin’ every nerve alive.

Hermes looks over at them and raises an eyebrow, she gives him dagger eyes in return. She suspects she isn’t the only one doing so, though with his mouth at her ear, ain’t so easy to see his eyes. “I miss ya,” he rumbles and damn if that ain’t persuasive. His hand on her leg climbs higher, skirts the fabric upwards. She lets him; it’s a winning argument. Good fingers, his; big and all-together too capable of making her scream herself stupid, and brother, she has screamed herself stupid on those fingers a _lot_ of times and it has never once gotten old. 

“Miss you too,” she says; she grabs his big thigh, muscular and unobliging as the rest of him. “Like hell.”

“Like that, huh?” His hand that is around her shoulder tightens; the one rucking up her skirt is inching up to a point somewhere north of scandalous now. 

“That’s right,” she says, letting her fingers slide up his right thigh. She doesn’t ask if he is missing her, on account of not being sure if she really wants the answer. Trouble, being as trouble always is, is that that answer can be damn complicated.

He presses one hand to just the edge of her panties. She will say this for the man: he loves to touch her there, never been a man in the pantheon so fond of _that _particular part of a woman as himself, saving perhaps her father, with whom she bears the dubious distinction of being perhaps one of five immortal women in the whole world who ain't been bounced all over his cock. Daddy ain’t choosy; Hades, now, he is very fussy, has his type and his type has mostly been like her: little hellcat scrapers with tight asses and big mouths. In previous years, she would have bragged that the difference between those two was a classic case of prioritizing quantity vs quality. Now, perhaps, she is less sure as to which side of that equation her own husband falls. “Tease,” she says.

“That’s right,” he says, and kisses her ear, and then he nibbles at it, hard, as everything about him is plenty hard, and then he goes for the kill, hand right on her button, heavy, then dances away, just lets his fingertips loiter in the area, reminding her he’s about and she’s his. Once his attention is on you, it’s on you, and Persephone, he is _on_ her.

“How’s your summer?” He asks, like they’re the kind of couple who ever makes small talk. 

“Hard,” she says; there’s a wobble to her throat, and it’s not entirely caused by the hand pressing in on her legs. 

“Me too,” he says, and she can tell, with her hand, that he isn’t just referring to his work. He’s getting there, alright; she leaves her hand just at the edge of his thigh, knowing it will drive him crazy.

“A lot of work,” she says, and his finger rubs up into her slit, and she gulps. “Harvest time coming. Already got in some early crops, just…” _Just in case you hold your hand out and I come crawling home with you_, she does not say. “Same for you?”

“Been a damn mess.” He sighs into her ear; one finger slides down to find her wet, and she barely refrains from an unladylike grunt when he presses one of his big old fingers right up against her clit before again withdrawing, dancing away after his viper’s kiss. “Boring machine broke in the southernmost mine; and phone line snapped somewhere over Tartarus, and…” He mutters a long explanation of everything falling apart, of electrical grids that don’t output enough, of workers who aren’t working hard enough, of material delays and production lines jamming, and not a damn word about _that girl_, though she knows she must be there, and not a damn word about _step into my office_, although she can’t imagine she hasn’t, and not a damn word about anything more personal than a board meeting, as though that’s the only thing that keeps intruding upon her thoughts. The only thing even remotely dangerous in this conversation is what he does with his hand. His hand is having its fun, the barest edge of his fingertips lightly stroking her panties with every word. Always was good at that part of playing the lover; the physical stuff he excels at, the emotional sharing…not so much.

But ain’t that always been her problem, too?

He hasn’t taken his hand off her shoulder, either. His drink is getting warm; she debates taking a sip of it herself, but isn’t sure if he’ll find it sexy or irritating, so she doesn’t. Instead she lightly—just lightly, so subtly no one around can see—squeezes her legs, trapping his arm in there. He stops mid-rant about the boring machine’s many problems (which are _boring_, in every detail), for a full half a second.

And then he kisses her neck; once, twice. His tongue slides around her necklace and _tugs_, and she whines, and Hermes looks at her and she doesn’t bother to give him a stink eye because Hades has her. He _has_ her.

“Come here,” he purrs. “Come _here_.”

She listens, shifts off her chair and is all but hauled up onto his. Splitting a stool ain’t exactly subtle. Hermes looks back at them with quizzable eyebrows. She rearranges herself quite handily, simultaneously holding herself prim and proper while also sitting right on a very, very hard piece of him indeed; his hand splays lazily at her thighs, and it’s certainly not the most comfortable move but she also certainly doesn’t mind the way his hand just slowly draws little circles there. She wonders if he lets that little songbird sit like this too and her desire falters; she makes a little harsh noise and he squeezes her thigh wordlessly—is that little move his confession or his comfort? She doesn’t know, brother. She’s a goddess alright but gods, for all their powers, ain’t the least bit omniscient. 

He _finally _goes back to his drink, sipping with one hand while the other is just playin’ with her thigh. He doesn’t say much, and she wonders if he’s thinking what she is, or if he’s afraid of messing things up, or if he just isn’t in a mood to be chatty. She squeezes him between her thighs and he makes a soft humming noise that vibrates deep in her chest.

“You’re a cruel woman,” he murmurs, with none of the grousing that waylays his usual insults toward her. “Teasing a man so.” She does so again, and again; little hummingbird squeezes that make his hips very, very slowly move underneath her. She’s always been damn good at seduction; especially for him, given how long they’ve been together and how little experience she had before their marriage. Truth told, most of what she’s ever learned about men, about sex: it’s all been from him. Was a little thing when they married, you know, inexperienced; people upstairs said it wouldn’t last. Look at them now.

“You married me,” she reminds him; she doesn’t have the invocative heat that comes usually with that remark in their arguments; no matter what insult he hurtles at her, he can never deny his own bad judgment in marrying her. Whatever her faults, his are always the greater, for he was older and certainly, even then, he should have known. Persephone, she’s rarely been a happy thing.

“I did,” he says, and it sounds almost warm; not the heavy and rushed _so I did_, spit like poison from his throat.

“Would you do it again?” She asks, breathy, and the world stops spinning for a good moment as they both realize that they’ve crossed from the champagne section of the evening—bubbly, frothy, sweet—into the whiskey-hour—hard, burning, stinging.

He downs his glass in a big gulp that she hopes is more nerves than delaying the inevitable. This is it, she thinks; this is _it. _One way or another.

“Yes,” he says, wiping whiskey from his mouth with all the quiet but powerful grace of a boulder starting to careen down a hill. She doesn’t have any way to brace from the impact of his words, but the wave of relief hits her hard, and maybe hits him hard too; he puts the whiskey glass down with a deafening thud and grabs her cheek instead, maneuvers her into a kiss.

And brother, it’s been a long time since they kissed but she does remember the sweetness of it, she does. Which is not to say that it’s one of their best—they’ve been out of sync so long Persephone barely remembers just how to pull her lips to his, and they misalign a bit, and his facial hair scrapes her chin , and his big nose presses into her skin just a bit awkward, but brother, it’s still a good kiss. They get better as it goes along; he remembers how to shift his head so his nose only brushes hers, she remembers how to put her lips to him just how he likes it, a light brush, then a heavy press. Takes time and effort, but it’s nice.

His hands move like those of a younger man; one of them up, one of them down—a hand brushes her breast, a hand brushes her thighs. She wants—she _wants_. She wonders, irritatingly, the last time he’s been kissed like this.

“1920, I think,” he says, and she realizes she’s either said it out loud, or he’s developed telepathy – she wouldn’t put it past him. “Madrid.”

“It was raining,” she says; there’s relief that this is with her, with _her_, though she knows he is likely too much a gentleman to ever tell her what happened in that office and she doesn’t even want to _know_. If that girl kissed him hard enough to take his breath away, he won’t tell her. But she hopes she didn’t, hopes if things happened, she was as fish-lipped as they come. “You were soaked.”

“You didn’t mind,” he warbles, and, indeed, she hadn’t. They’d stolen kisses in a summer grove, her powers ripening all the fruit on all the trees around them, citrus falling like fragrant little gumdrops all around them. His powers, of course, killed the trees; they can’t help what they are.

“I want –” She says, but she doesn’t get to tell him, because his lips are on her, abrupt and hot and intense, moving with the liquid heat of another time, his hands curled around her. “I _want_ – “ she tries again; he shakes his head, cuts off the escape route for her words.

His tongue lands in her mouth with an almost languid grace; she whimpers, desires ablated in the oblivion that is the oblivion of all oblivions. She loses track of time how they spend time making out; Hermes clears his throat after what could be minutes or hours and they both separate only then, after being chastised. She giggles. He looks straight out toward Hermes, wordlessly fumbles into his suit jacket until he pulls out a heavy billfold. He stands and she stands and she watches him peel off a whole bunch of bills, the dull noise of his fingertips counting out bills all but defeating. Doesn’t bother to wait for change, and her belly tightens; soon enough he’ll reach out her hand and whisper a little seductive trill—_ time to fly south for the winter?_—and she’ll go, and he’ll go down with her.

She swallows, hating herself for wanting it, hating herself for not hating herself enough to say _no_. Hating him a little bit for just assuming the old train can just hop back on the track she's already yelled she doesn’t want to go down.

Her heart skips a beat, and he stares at her, eyes glassy despite not being a bit drunk. Man can hold his liquor as good as her, if not more so; hard to wear down a mountain. He touches his eye for a moment, stares at his fingers as if what’s there is something wholly unexpected, alien.

And then he looks at her, and he quietly says, “One moment.”

And he turns. And makes a beeline for the bathroom.

And she blinks, stunned. Her husband is a great many things, but incontinent isn’t one of them.

“Much appreciated for your patronage, sister,” Hermes says; he picks up the money, tucks it into his vest. He can’t quite hide that he’s relieved to be free of their bullshit. She does not, it must be noted, respond. She stares at the bathroom door like it can open, just slide open, open sesame, but it doesn’t. That door stays right shut and Persephone has a feeling it wasn’t just a pressing bladder issue that made him run.

She leans on the balustrade of her brother’s bar, waits. Taps her feet. Some girl looks at her, staring at the men’s room like a maniac, and the look on the girl’s face says it plain: _sister, you’re nuts._

“You don’t know the half of it,” Persephone mouths. “Not the half.” Love, she thinks, makes everyone crazy. Or at least, makes _her_ crazy.

He doesn’t come out.

She waits another interminable few minutes, surely no more than five total but each feels like a century. She wonders, uncharitably, if her husband has, for whatever mysterious reason, done a runner. That thought makes her angry, and as always when Persephone is angry and not-quite-drunk-enough, she confronts. She storms toward the bathroom.

“Sister,” Hermes mutters; she ignores him. “Sister!”

She turns back to him, gives him a flip of her hand and a head shake. “Ain’t gonna clog your pipes, brother,” she quips; he mouths something back but she doesn’t pay any attention, doesn’t hear it over her thundering ears as she knocks open the door like springtime burstin’ through a late winter thaw.

Her husband is there; ain’t done a runner, him. Standing at the sink, tall and mighty as a proud, old oak. His eyes are red. The sink is running. Nobody else in the room; small mercies. Her heart tugs at the sight of him; sorrow on his face, strangely attractive agony in so steady a man.

She understands the emotions. Ain’t an easy thing, them, and himself, he’s got his own sins he’s struggling to overcome. Her anxious heart is slightly soothed; she walks in, the boots on her feet all noise: _clop clop_. He recognizes it, obviously so.

He turns. “Sorry—“ He says, and she thinks, he is not _just_ apologizing for staring at himself overlong, and he is not _just_ apologizing for one specific thing, and she senses he is going to give her a list, a list of all the things he has done or may have done, and she does not want it. She would far rather live in the land of the undefined, where she can only debate, hypothetically, forgiving him for something that may have happened, and may have not. Knowing if it did or not is too concrete, forces the choice; she doesn’t want that.

She just wants him.

“Can’t wait,” she hisses, instead, and goes on the attack, jumping him. He catches her, mostly, though he does stumble. What happens next is a somewhat awkward struggle for control: he holds her arms and presses her toward the sink; she pushes him toward the stall, and eventually he growls and lunges for the door. It doesn’t take him more than a couple of minutes to lock it shut and weld it for good measure, his godly hands heating up as fast as the mood; his lips are sliding on hers all smooth, slipping and sliding like there are no harsh edges to them after all.

Once he’s got the door done he goes more on the offensive, hikes her skirts up real nice and squeezes her ass. “Fuck,” she murmurs, and he pulls away, gestures towards a condom machine near the door and digs through his far-too-many pockets to find some loose change to buy him what he thinks she wants.

Now, Persephone is not proud to admit this, but it is true: when they were first married, wasn’t a damn mothering bone in her body. It was expected back then, obligated even, but she didn’t care, and he was willing to go with whatever she wanted, so besotted back in those days with every little bit of her. She’d been a little thing, selfish thing; wanted to be by her man all the time, without anyone else – even their very own blood – jumping in and demanding upon her attention, and given that their kind can breed forever, it wasn’t such a pressing demand. Now they’ve gone through periods of trial and error in such matters since, but the underworld isn’t conductive to gardens growing if you understand her meaning, and when things went from bad to worse—well, asking him to wrap it up seemed the least of their worries. A part of her had even enjoyed it, reducing this almighty god-king to a man scrambling for a rubber; there’s power in control and Persephone has just as bad a bug for it as he does, deep down.

She runs her arm up his side and thinks: _what the hell_. She’ll be damned if she lets his first-born come from his maybe-mistress, and not his wife.

“Don’t.” It’s a simple command but he stiffens at the thought of it; she feels it with him pressed up against her.

“Huh,” he says; processing. It’s been many-a-year since they’ve gone bare to one another, but he seems to come to an accord quickly, kissing her soft in response, just a little peck but heavy with meaning. He’s always been a bit more domestic than she has; between the two of them, was always him playing house, him whispering _if you came with me, I would paint our sky in diamonds for you _while touching her under the night sky, him who successfully sold hell as heaven to her and made it even resemble heaven as such, at times. “Rolling the dice,” he says, but there’s hope in that voice. “You sure?”

“It’s a risk,” she purrs, going on the offensive. That’s what _she_ has always been good at: she ain’t traditional, not by half, she’s a powerful goddess in her own right and she is as seductive as the earth that is her mother and aggressive as the sky that is her father. She juts her hips into his, lets his hard-as-_hell_ cock grind into her clothed belly as she pushes him up against the wall. “But a risk worth taking.”

He stares at her, a little wild-eyed. She smiles and leans upwards, lets her teeth just graze his earlobe; that makes him jump a bit, his cock desperately seeking a port in the storm and she’s going to make it _hers_. He huffs once, twice; she presses a hand on his throat, makes him pay attention.

“Give me a _baby_,” she purrs, squeezing off his oxygen just a bit, and releases. A switch flips in him; he growls low in his throat, low in that big deep throat, bull-frog warning croon, or perhaps mating song, and then he’s got her in her arms and in the span of several seconds, he’s got her in the stall—closed, then sealed, almost effortlessly, advantages of marrying a metal god there _yes sir_—and he’s got her on his lap, and his hands are fumbling for his fly, but her hands are faster, and they both groan once she gets him out and she doesn’t waste time getting him in.

Now, point of kind, he is not an easy man to take. He is unobligingly hard in every respect, and big in every aspect, and even with his clothes on, he isn’t soft. He doesn’t have the soft lines or the pot belly that you’d expect of a man of his age (or at least, what his age _appears_ to be). He is all muscle underneath that suit, hard muscles and scar tissue and she debates opening his big vest up, his fine silver shirt, and see all those muscles and scars contract and expand with his breath, but then she thinks of that girl, and her sharp fingertips, and doesn’t want to know if she’ll find that other songbird’s marks in his skin. Some points still too sore to quite bring up and Persephone, she likes to live in the maybes more than the definites.

Now himself, he has no compulsion about rucking her up; he looks up at her all awed for half a second and then he’s pawing at her dress, snapping the back and pulling down her sleeves, hitching up her skirt so he can see as much as he can. She don’t look away neither, and there’s an intimacy in that, in the heated look of his eyes on her skin. She makes a point to take all of him, down to the root, even if it feels a bit painful, then a lot painful; he is not, as stated, an easy man to take.

He grunts and pulls her down further, tight as he can make it, her skin to his, and she gasps into his shoulder at how full she is of him, almost bites down hard onto his shoulder, into all his finery. He doesn’t move for a full moment, just a small eternity of his huge cock piercing her down to the tip of her, and she looks at him, and sees a look of concern on his face, and feels the cinnamon-hot-fire of annoyance burst through her, because who is he, after all he’s done, to treat her gentle?

“Been a while,” he murmurs, voice deep as sin. “Just—“

“I can handle it,” she growls, and it is true, also, that she always has; even when she was young, when he was her first and she knew no better, the pomegranate still staining her lips—she took him then, too, every bit of him. And she never cried a damn bit about it. She was _never_ delicate.

“I know,” he says; a sigh. He’s annoyed at the response and she thinks only he can find a reason to be pissed when he’s buried all the way deep down inside her. “Just…Savoring,” he says, a smile on his face as wicked as all that lies below, and damn if it ain’t charming. It defuses her, at least a bit.

“Fuck me,” she demands, seeking control; she jostles her hips a bit. He smiles, a sort of half-smile, a _this-ain’t-quite-right-but-it-ain't-quite-wrong_ smile, and does. He starts slow, his hands on her hips, the movement slow and calm and barely tipping anything out of her at all ‘fore he’s all the way back in, keeping her as stuffed full of him as he can. She wants to move with him, up the tempo, but the hand on her hips says: _we’re doing this on my terms_. Course they are, they always are. So he fucks her slow, and the build-up is slow, slow; she feels him inside, working and moving, but it’s _slow_, a gentle hum, not the electric crackle she wants.

“I said _fuck_ me,” she growls, and he chuckles, but does nothing more, maybe picks up the pace maybe half a second’s pace and no more, keeps himself deep as he can be. She whines and his lips silence her, as best they can; the press of his thin lips to hers is hard, everything about him is hard, and she wants him to jack-hammer her until she’s fucking sore, until she can’t fucking remember to _breathe_, until she can’t feel guilty and can’t feel _complicated_ and just feel him, just him, all she wants is him and he just _won’t_.

He breathes out onto her shoulder when they come up for air, shifts his hands lower and holds her ass, not her hips; he speeds up maybe a little bit, but it’s still slow for her taste. “Want to last,” he grumbles; she doesn’t care. She tugs his head up and pulls him into another kiss, a deeper one, and his hands squeeze down _hard_ on her ass.

“You like my ass?” She purrs in his ear, nips at his earlobe; he turns to look at her, expression all _it’s obvious I do_, but he doesn’t say anything. She waits until he’s all the way in before squeezing him tight, deep inside, and he makes a funny little noise in his throat, a surprised little half-moan that’s at least a step in the right direction. He ain’t much one for dirty talking himself but he does like to hear it, and she lets him: “You wanna fuck my ass?” she asks. “I’d let you. Bet you'd make me scream myself hoarse when you ain’t even in my cunt.”

“Like your cunt,” he says, almost sweet but too hot to be properly sweet; the look on his face is carnal, not kind.

“Hm, you do?” His hands move off her ass and up her sides, groping her tits; he has always loved those, too. “You still like this little cunt?” She squeezes him for emphasis.

“_Yes_.” He picks up the pace then, slightly; moves her until he can maneuver his mouth onto her tits, he’s _very_ good at that, and she runs her hands tight through his silver hair as he samples one, then the other.

“You broke this little cunt in, you remember that?” She chuckles, throaty, then groans as he distracts her; he slows down a bit again, suckles on her nipple with a grace that is, frankly, pornographic. “First time? I was so tight back then, took you an hour to work more than a finger in me.”

“I remember,” he says, quiet, more focused on thrusting than talking. She wonders if he thinks about that as much as she does, times when things were simple; giggling in mama’s gardens, his hat tossed off into a blackberry patch, _this might hurt a bit but I’ll make it worth it_—as always, he told the truth, even if he told it a little slant.

“Still that good for you?” She asks, the question coming out breathy. “After all these years?”

“Yes,” he says, soft and surprisingly reverent. “Always.” His eyes are glassy; he’s close to gone, she thinks; one more move and his control will snap like a twig. 

“Fuck,” she moans, and he nods up at her: _uh huh_. She should be quiet, but she isn’t; her pleasure spreads, that font of electric desire buried deep inside getting hammered now, hot and hard, so hard, ah, that’s the stuff, that’s the _stuff_. He’s hitting that spot inside her nice and good, he is _so good_ at that, she can just close her eyes now and pretend there’s no problems, no other girl, no horrible shanty-towns, just her and him and him _inside_ her.

“Fuck me, fuck me,” she prays, a little prayer to him, and he is glad to answer it; he has her, he has her so fucking _taunt_, and he doesn’t stop, not one bit of him stops, slamming into her, the noise loud, she’s so wet she can hear the slickness of him moving in her, his movements deliberate and fast and so, so _good_. “Fuck!”

“Yes,” he says, quiet, face half-buried between her breasts. He suckles her hard, one hand snaking between her legs; she’s close, she thinks, so close, and then his thumb rubs up against her clit, moving in time with their thrusts, and fuck, fuck, _fuck_, it’s good, it’s so good, and she makes a low and heavy moan in his shoulder, wants to kiss him, but can’t, can’t move at all, not with him working her like – oh fuck, _oh fuck! _

“Don’t stop!” She cries out, and she’s loud, moaning like a whore, and it’s obvious, no doubt, to Hermes just what his baby sister is doing in the bathroom of his bar, but she doesn’t care, doesn’t care; there it is, finally, there’s her man, snapped in on her, and just her, and nothing but her. She moves as fast as she can, his hips moving as fast as he can, and they’re fucking, they’re fucking so hard, and his beautiful face is red and her face is no doubt red too, and she’s moaning, and he’s holding her and they’re doing so _fucking_ good, and he surges deep inside her, hard and _harder_ still, he’s so fucking _hard_, so big and so fucking _hard_, and it hurts but it hurts _so, so _good. She cries out as he thumbs at her clit, and then everything shatters and he grabs her, holds her _tight_ and she screams and she goes over the mountain, so high over the mountain, she’s coming, she’s _coming_, her thighs are shaking, and he follows her over that mountain, burying his seed deep within her garden with what is, for him, a loud grunt.

He doesn’t pull out for a long moment, just looks at her, and she knows they should talk, should talk about what happened, should talk about all their complexities and concavities but neither of them says anything at all, and she just collapses onto his chest, instead; he rubs her back but he doesn’t say anything for a long moment either. She tries to stand and her knees are wobbly; she can see from the corner of his eyes that he smiles, takes that as a right compliment. He isn’t wrong to.

She wants a drink. Or a cigarette. Or – another go. Something. Something to distract her from the seamy underbelly of their relationship, from songbirds and drink and winter-storms and summer-doldrums.

But she doesn’t tell him that, instead she moves away, just making herself look proper. He doesn’t talk either; takes until she’s got her skirts back down and he’s tucked himself back up into his pants ‘fore he says a word. She looks at him as he clears his throat; he’s tried to make himself look more the gentleman than a man well-fucked, but has only succeeded in looking like a well-fucked gentleman.

“So,” he says. And nothing else.

“So,” she says; she runs a hand up his jacket; he tosses his arm around her.

Neither of them says anything, not for a long moment, and she knows it’s coming. Her stomach turns, queasy; he looks a little tired, too, and leans back against the door of the stall. He sighs, and he looks old. That thought makes her uncomfortable.

And so Persephone does what she does. 

She pivots, as Persephone always does, when she is uncertain; when in doubt, go for the throat. It’s what’s kept them going this long: distraction, distraction, distraction. “We’ll have to lie,” she says, thumbing at his dress shirt.

“Hm?” He seems distracted, but he watches her hands, smoothing and playing with his shirt.

“To the baby. Can’t tell her she was conceived in Hermes’ hole-in-the-wall.” He looks up at the ceiling, his face completely unreadable for half a second, then he gives her a half-laugh, sadness and happiness both buried in it.

“Well,” he shrugs. “Just won’t tell her that part. All she needs to know is she was made with…love.” He looks up and down at her, gives her a real _quick_ up and down as if he’s testing to see if she’ll challenge that little fact, that they still love one another, though she knows well and truly they do, even if she wishes they didn’t sometimes. “You really want…?”

She snorts. “You think I would have let you if I didn’t want?” She’s shaking a bit; he twirls her toward the mirror, watches her watching him in the mirror, his arms curled tight around her belly and she wonders if he’s already thinking about it, if he wants it, if he’s already fantasizing about her well-rounded with his baby, already running facts and figures about how many more souls he needs to damn on his line to keep his baby daughter in lace and pearls. Her throat tightens; she breaks away.

“I don’t know, what you…” He looks at their combined faces in the mirror, then back at her. “Well. I don’t know.”

“Well, that makes two of us, don’t it?” She snaps; he winces and runs his hand over his old hair and she thinks that they are way too old to not know what they’re doing but, of course, they do not.

“Be a mighty pretty baby,” she mumbles, trying to keep the lovey-dovey thread spinning, and he looks up at her, obviously befuddled from the tilt of his head at her attempt to be nicer, to try harder, to be his wife because she loves him so much she can’t imagine not being so. Slowly, he nods.

“Especially if she looks like her mother,” he mutters, eyes down like it took him something to say that, and maybe it did—it’s sweet, and maybe they don’t work _well_ but they do work, she thinks, they do work.

He slides next to her and offers a hand; it takes her almost off guard, despite her anticipation of it. He smiles, and she feels herself damned in those shiny teeth of his.

“Wanna head out, lover?” He asks; she takes his hand. They always knew she would; he isn’t surprised, and she hates it, and she hates how complicit she is in this, hates how every part of her would come running to tie his shoes.

“Let’s sneak out the back way,” she murmurs; entirely because she doesn’t want to see Hermes, doesn’t want to look him in the eye after he knows that she knows that she’s going down, because she’s going to blow the whole thing again, yes sir, Gaia will cry out and where will Persephone be?

Flat on her back, with her husband above her, sweating and straining and in love, mad love, with her the whole way down to the core of the earth, to the core of her being, and beyond. That’s the problem, always been the problem: she loves him and he loves her and it ain’t enough, brother, just ain’t enough.

He hums a little song as he holds her hand; he doesn’t say anything but hums, like he’s a man in control, like this is all part of his plan, and maybe it was. It seems like she’s always been running to his plan, every little thing his doing. She wonders, a bit, if himself crying in the bathroom wasn’t a strategic act, if the songbird plot wasn’t just meant to force her to stay in line from the threat of another girl, if taking her out to the brambles and briars was a planned seduction, if she’s no different from his little songbird in anything but her damn age, and her stomach turns, because she doesn’t like to think that but she can’t, entirely, shake the feeling.

Her stomach feels sick as she walks behind him, hand limply held in his own; he leads the way, as he’s always done. Always she was following on his coattails, even before he was hers. Was a little thing once, following right behind him, followed him ‘til he laid her down and they’ve been together ever since, and when he says dance, she dances; when he says its time to go, she goes. He says jump, she says how high, and she might argue a bit first but ultimately: she dances, she goes, she jumps. He summons his leather coat; drops her hand to drape it around her shoulder. His hand is instantly back at her side, she takes it, as she always will. She hates herself for taking it; squeezes his hand and it isn’t the least bit comforting when he squeezes back. The temperature starts to dip, and her heart goes down into her belly with it. She tells herself even if she goes down for the night, well, it isn’t like one frost kills _everything_.

Excepting, of course, she knows that it will kill _some_.

She stops, abruptly, halfway to the station, and looks at his big back, and her heart sinks, sinks, sinks.

She can’t do this.

He stops when she does, turns on his heels.

“What?” He says, all quiet and guarded. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t –” She swallows, and she thinks: she is mad. She must look it, too, must look like the most insane woman, and she thinks of that woman looking at her in the bar and she hates that that woman saw her true. 100% crazy, Persephone is, and he looks at her, surprise written on his raised brows—and the grimace on his face says it ain’t a pleasant one. “I can’t do this.”

“Oh,” he says. He puts his hands in his pockets. He is holding back an argument; she knows he is, can see it in how he vibrates, how his body shifts back and forth because he wants to explode forth in a list of recriminations ages long, and the boy coming down may have reminded them, for a moment, of the good times but she sees in his face a harsh reminder of all the bad ones, all the nights spent alone without her, all the anger and loneliness and hideous arguments about comings and goings that they could never change.

“Isn’t good,” she says, licking her lips as she spitfires, trying to find some reason, any reason that isn’t _I just can’t do this anymore_. “For the baby.” It’s an excuse, it’s a bad excuse, a pivot that he isn’t going to believe, and isn’t exactly a lie but certainly isn’t the whole truth either. 

“You don’t know if you’re even…” He’s raising a hand, drops it, looks at her like she’s mad, and she is. “You can’t know.”

“If I go with you,” she says, calm, “I won’t be. Underworld ain’t good for growing that kind of sprout, you know that as much as I do.”

He’s silent for a long moment; he rocks back on his heels, rocks back like he’s trying to contain himself, hisses like the rattlesnake he is. “Should know in a month,” she says.

He looks at her a long moment, and she thinks: he isn’t buying it. Storm clouds rattle above, and a snowflake lands on her cheek. In _July_. She isn’t sure which of them is causing it, so she only angrily jabs it away. “You’ll want to stay, if you are,” he hisses. “You'll want to _stay_.” 

“That’s a conversation for then,” she says, already knowing if she is and if she does, it’ll be a knock-down fight where they’ll both scream themselves hoarse when she tells him she wants to stay up-top, wants to give birth to their baby in sunlight and not in shadow. “Not now.”

And he grimaces, and she knows he’s thinking about her, and that fight, and that baby, and all the doubts come crawling on: _how-could-they-even-think-about-that_, because their relationship is complicated enough for two, let alone a third, and_ ain’t-they-too-old-to-even-have-it_? She curls her hands around her sides and shivers, and it is not, truthfully, on account of the cold.

“It’s not just that,” he says, flat. “You wouldn’t want to stay for just _that_. You don’t _want_ to come home.”

“I don’t want to see your factories, no. Don’t want to see those souls you buried down in the mines,” she snaps, irritated; why can’t he just _let it go_? “I don’t want to see your songbird, tragedy in her eyes either. No, Hades, I do _not_ want to go home. I don’t miss it, not what you’ve turned our home into.”

“Well.” He shakes his head and laughs, the sound haunting and mean despite it being a quiet, under the breath sort of huff. “Don’t hold back.”

But he _is_ holding back; and that bothers her, because he’s always holding back, and she’s tired, and alarmed, because she knows he holds back and he holds back and then he lets it go, all at once, in a disgusting torrent of venom, and she is _tired_ of dealing with that, and she wishes that that boy’s visit had taught them how to hold on to their love, and she tries to think of how she felt then, his flower in her hand, and she thinks:_ love is hard_. So damn hard.

“I miss you,” she says, soft, curls her arms around him and holds him tight despite the tension in his body when he does so, and she doesn’t understand how he can be so tense when not half an hour before, the man was bringing her to screaming orgasms. “I miss _you_.”

He doesn’t soften at that, not really, but his hand finds her shoulder and he awkwardly pats at it for a long moment. A moment so long and silent, she’s almost startled when he breaks it.

“Miss you,” he mutters. “Always.” And then he slides his arms around her, crushes her in a hug so tight, and she realizes, with a sinking feeling, that this is his best attempt at trying. That he is just as in love with her as ever, and it might not be enough for him either, and she’s tired and she loves him but he is—impossible. As always.

“Come home,” he says, and he sounds so needy, so damn needy, that she wants to go, as she’s gone so many times before. “Come home with me.”

“Hades.” She feels ridiculous, out of her depth, wants to tell him he’s being a fool to want what he can’t have; paradoxically, she also wants to run home with him and share his bed. That’s the problem with Persephone, she never knows what she wants, and if and when she knows she wants, it’s all conflicted: life and death, drink and sobriety, trouble and paradise. “I can’t,” she says.

“Please,” he says, whisper-quiet.

“I can’t.” She strokes his cheek. “Hades.”

His face falls, and she holds him, and she hates that he asks, and she hates that she wants to go as much as she doesn’t; she wants to stay with him, but she can’t. He wants to stay with her, but she just can’t go. Can’t keep letting the world slip out of sync, just for their selfish desires.

“Come home with _me_,” she murmurs, and he pulls back, startled. “Come to mama’s. Ain’t nothing keeping you down there.”

“There’s work to be done,” he says; he takes a step back. “Boring machine – “

“Can wait a night.” She closes the distance between them again, closes the distance. “Come home with me. Even if it’s just tonight.”

“Your mother—" 

"You’re a _God_ and a _King_ aside. Mama might not be happy, but she can stuff it.” _Sorry mama_, she thinks; she will apologize, later. One disastrous relationship at a time.

He taps his foot, _tap tap tap_; he’s thinking about it. Thinking too long, she thinks. “You got somewhere to be?” she asks, jealous-bitch rising. “Someone waiting…?”

He flinches; there is no need to say who they both think that _someone_ could be. 

“No,” he says, but says nothing else: _tap tap tap_, his foot goes. She hates it, but she gives him time.

“Sleep in my bed tonight,” she murmurs after a few minutes. “Please.”

He gives her a softish look at that for half a second, then hardens back to his usual stony face.

“There’s work to be done,” he says, flicking his fingers fussily. “The workers will fall behind if I’m not—” _breathing down their backs like a fire-breathing dragon_, her brain fills in, but she doesn’t say.

“You can afford the hit,” she says, instead; he purses his lips. He doesn’t like it, but it’s true; he could buy out every contract he’s ever taken without breaking even a slight sweat, financially.

“Ain’t right,” he mumbles, finally, after a long few moments. “Ain’t right to slink into your mother’s house like a rat—”

“It’s my house, too, and right enough.” She tugs his hand. “C’mon.”

“It’s not our marriage bed,” he says, voice half-cracked, like he’s being summoned from somewhere deeper than Tartarus. “Not our—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She whirls on him, jabs a finger toward her. “You gonna argue fucking in a cramped stall at Hermes is closer to our marriage bed than the bed I sleep on half the year?!”

He looks at her, stink-eyed, _that-ain’t-it-at-all_-eyed, but he doesn’t tell her what it _is-at-all_, and so she just throws up her arms, a one-two _ugh_ in their dance of frustration.

She debates stomping off toward home, leaving him alone, but her stomach twists at the thought of it, as she suspects it always will, because now he has someone who can soften his angst, a little songbird to sing his troubles to, and now every damned decision, she realizes with a sinking belly, is gonna be this: a reflexive split-second decision as to which is more important: being thought kindly of in his heart, or being the one whose morally right. Choose the latter, and she imagines it’ll only be a year or two, tops, before he’s fucking that songbird in their bed, forcing her to scream her little ass off as a warning for Persephone, who will have to hear it all winter long. Keep selling out her morals for his, and the girl will stay on the line, but so will a million other souls, all working on one goal, the cacophonous machinery of her husband’s mind. Neither, as such, seems a livable situation. She runs a hand through her hair, stressed, and hisses.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I really hate you.”

He looks at her, cool-eyed; doesn’t flinch, doesn’t stir. “An hour ago, you wanted to have my _baby_,” he points out.

“Both can be true at the same time.” Her face breaks. She jabs at a tear that’s coming down her cheek. “Dammit.”

“Damn it all,” he says. He puts his hands in his pockets. He does not offer to walk her home; he was never the type for that. “I…” His mouth opens, and his mouth slams shut. He looks, at least, a little bit apologetic; it would be easier, she thinks, if he didn’t.

“Don’t,” she says; whatever he’s confessing, she doesn’t want to hear it. “Just don’t.”

“Alright.” He touches her shoulder, lets his touch linger there, limp and old and heavy as the earth itself. She’ll say this: at least the boy’s visit has kept them from storming off from one another so much. It was times they got to this point and just went to their respective corners to lick their wounds. Now, at least, he ain’t running.

“Why can’t you come with me?” She hisses; “What would it cost you, to come into my bed?”

Because he never has, she realizes, abruptly; rare is his summer-time visit, rarer still one made on her home territory. They’ve fucked in a few briar patches, a few forests and caves, fucked in a lot of groves and a lot of gardens, but _never_ in the bed she sleeps in when she isn’t in his.

“It’s not…” he shrugs. “It’s not what I had in mind.”

She laughs; she can’t help it, it flows out of her, like black-gold, like tar, a slithery-black pitch that coats her tongue. “You know, sometimes I regret how young I was when we married. What I wouldn’t give to time travel back, warn myself about bullshit like _not what I had in mind_.”

“Hm.” He can’t say anything to that; she was _damn_ young when he took her, damn young. Barely grown, even if she thought herself so. He knew, though; knew she was young, knew she was inexperienced, knew she was his and just his and knew, too, even if he didn’t know how complicated it was gonna get, that Persephone was just a girl, deep down, back then. Girl-queen with a crown older than herself.

“Might have given myself an inkling about how impossible you were gonna become.” She lashes out; he nods, stiffly. Offended, but trying not to show it. “It ain’t always got to be your way, you know. Marriage is supposed to be a compromise.”

“I know,” he says, voice louder now. “Ain’t me who just decided we were going to have a _baby_.”

She pinches her nose, takes a deep breath. Lord father above and grandfather below, he is impossible. “You gonna lie to my face and tell me you didn’t want one?”

He says nothing. Shows nothing. Mighty rock slab, Mr. Hades is, inscrutable to his very own wife.

“Why won’t you…” She’s frustrated, sighs; it doesn’t help. “It’s such a little thing! Can’t you show a bit of emotion and _bend_ to what I want? For once? Or at least give me something beyond that – that you don’t want to meet me in the middle? That you’d rather spite your face than share my bed, just cuz it ain’t the _bedding_ you favor?”

His face falls for half a second, and she witnesses it, an ionic column come tumbling down. But he only looks stricken, doesn’t say anything. “Please,” she says, mumbling it toward the ground, because good gravy, ain’t it hard.

But he doesn’t say anything longer still; puts his hands in his pocket, and she wonders if that isn’t his way of admitting defeat. He rocks back and forth on his heels again, wanting desperately to leave, she thinks, but not allowing himself the privilege anymore. At least that was something.

“Well?” she says, and he nods, and doesn’t offer anything for a long time but the crunch of the leaves underneath his feet: _crunch crunch crunch_. Takes him a good ten minutes before he stops and clears his throat.

“Do you really regret it?” He asks. As usual, he’s pulled up something from _who-knows-when_, from _who-knows-where_; she looks at him, and, equally as usual, he offers no answers: he’s very still, hands half in his pockets, face as stony as a boulder.

“What?” She raises a hand. “Regret what?”

“Marrying me,” he says; he looks away. “You said you regretted marrying me.” Oh, that’s it, _that’s it,_ he’s gone and thrown himself a pity party. Persephone sighs heavily and stops, looks up to the sky. _Great grandfather above, can you stop my husband being such a damn fool_? She wants to holler; she doesn’t.

“I regretted that I was young,” she snaps. “That’s not at all the same. I swear to every god damn element on this world and underneath it, you are _impossible_. You think I don’t still want to be your bride, when I offer this very day to _carry your baby_?”

He nods once, twice; stares up to the sky like he’s asking his own grandfather for some kind of celestial advice that doesn’t come. “I don’t know what you think,” he says after a long moment.

“Well,” she says, sighing. Telling him plain doesn’t come easy, but she’ll put this to bed here and now. “Yes, I still want to be married to you. I just wish I’d come into it older. Was a young, vain thing when we married.”

“You’re still a young thing now,” he says, with a heavy shrug and a smile that tries and fails to be light, a joke that’s not really a joke. He’s always seen her as a young’un. It is true in some sense that she is in some ways young: eternally youthful-looking at least, and always younger than him by a few hundred centuries. But Persephone has lived through a lot; less than him but more than any mortal: pyramids, world wars, dust bowls. Persephone has seen it all. She’s as weather-beaten as him; she just shows it less, for now. Sooner or later, her warpaint will get blasted off, and she’ll go grey, like himself, and they’ll match. Already happened to Hermes; sure to soon happen to her, too. 

“Not what I meant. You were all my firsts; never been with anyone else. I never had any other relationships. You taught me everything I know.” She holds a hand toward him; he looks at it with a spitting fury, somehow finding, no doubt, to find a way to turn it around like some sort of insult. He is _damn_ good at that.

“You _want_ other relationships?” He growls out, and she sighs again; he is as jealous as she is, deep down inside, and it ain’t like he has any right to say a damn hell ass thing, not after what he’s threatened her with. “You saying I don’t _please_ you anymore—?”

“No,” she says. “But I mean, I ain’t had any other measure than you. Every important step of mine is yours. And you…that ain’t true of you. I ain’t your first, and I ain’t your only.” She side-steps the idea that she might not be his last; too vulnerable, too hurtful, too concrete a nebulous thought. “And because you were more…_experienced_, well, everything’s gone your way. The first time was your way, the second time was your way, _every time_ has been your way. Got married your way, ride your train your way. The power between us isn’t equal, that’s what I’m saying. You have everything of mine, but I – I ain’t got anything of yours. _That’s_ what I meant.”

“That isn’t true,” he grumbles. “Everything I have ever done—“

“Has been because you thought I might like it, I know.” She reaches out, squeezes his hand despite wanting to scowl and stomp off; trying, she thinks, is so damn hard, but he does squeeze back. “I _know, _lover. Ain’t saying you never try to dance with me, just that you’ve always been on the one setting the beat.”

He frowns; he doesn’t get it, maybe he _can’t_ get it. A man like him, he’s earned everything he has: born a prince, maybe, but he came from nothing, and had worse than nothing, growing up. She doesn’t know the full story—by unspoken agreement, none of the six talks about it much, himself least of them all—but she knows he grew up starving, that every bit of black tar gold and black rock coal he’s found has been through his own means and his own measures. He was never been a young man raised comfortable but for a future he chafed against, was never seduced away from the only life he’d ever known by a delightfully wicked older relative. She doesn’t know his full history (again, as stated; he is not an easy man to love, in any way, and part of it is in his unnecessary necessity to always have something secret, a little secret bit of him that she’ll never know), but bits of his life before her bubble up time to time in her memories. He doesn’t expect her to remember but Persephone, you know, brother, she remembers. Mind like a steel trap.

She thinks about it now, holding his hand. Was some nymph here or there that he was seeing when she was so young she was nothing but knee-high to him; nothing serious, she doesn’t think, but she was only a girl at the time, and only remembers that girl—was it a girl? Multiple girls?—being dark-eyed and darker-skinned. Not like herself, not honey-brown but acorn-brown, dirt-brown, tree-bark-brown, dryads of great beauty but not the inner wickedness, she’d thought, as a vain young thing, required to keep him.

Now she wonders, quietly, so quietly she barely admits the thought to herself, just in case he has, in fact, invented telepathy, that perhaps that dryad—or dryads, hell, she doesn’t remember if it was one or more, what was he himself to her then but a distant relative who sometimes offered her little metal presents, tin soldiers and silver dolls back in those days?— Maybe that date or those dates were just smart enough to get wise to his bullshit quick, got wise enough to see all his unnecessary secrets, his hard and unobliging body, his craggy mountain of sadness that seems inherent to himself. Maybe they saw that, and, big dick and bigger throne be damned, they ran in the other direction. She frowns, half-aggrieved on his behalf—he is not a bad husband, rotten sometimes but not bad, that’s _different_—and half on her own behalf, like they’d seen the warning signs so easily and she—she hadn’t.

Would it have changed anything if she had?

She looks up at him; a weary fondness inherent in her body for that tense frame, the deep frown, the obvious thought process that was going so deep as to be subterranean. He doesn’t get it, but, bless him, he is trying. He is always trying. Fuck those dryads, and that songbird, and any other ghost who had had him and managed to turn aside—he has his good points. This is one of them.

“I don’t,” he says, voice oddly cracked. “I don’t understand.”

“I know.” She brushes a hand by his ear, a familiar if infrequent gesture, as of late; he turns toward her, and she stops in her place, holds him tight. His arms go around her, and hers around him; gripping one another so tight that they couldn’t be torn apart, not for one moment – except, of course, in all their arguments.

“Only one who ever mattered,” he mutters. He puts his hand on her chin and holds her eyes as he tilts his head down toward her. “You.”

Simple, eloquent, impossible; her husband.

She pulls him tighter still, tight as she can, ‘til she can smell the oddly metallic tang of his blood under his skin, feel the pulse-point of his throat. “I know.”

“Then…?” He nuzzles the tip of her head with his chin, oddly sweet in a mood so sour. He sighs. “Can’t go back in time.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” She twists away, looks up at him. “But you can bend a bit, could let me set the pace _now_. Dance to my tune, tonight. Come to _my_ bed. Should be _our_ bed, lover, that’s the truth of it.”

“That’s…” he murmurs. “That’s not the way of things. A man’s…” _Got his damn pride_, she thinks; got pride enough to spare. She tilts her head up, prepares a dazzling invective that calls him all kinds of pig-headed. He shakes his head. Stops.

Rocks on his heels once, twice. Looks at her.

“Fine,” he says; “you want to go?” He holds her hand. “Let’s _go_. You pick the dance tonight.”

“What?” He closes the gap between them again, drops her hand to hold her shoulder instead.

“Let’s go,” he repeats, mouth thin and nervous, but the hand on her chin is warm and tender.

“But you didn’t—” She’s thrown; Persephone is used to a lot of things but winning isn’t one of them.

“It’s fine.” He says that so very soft, not so very angry; squeezes her hand. “Lead the way.”


	3. Chapter 3

She swallows, feels a bit unmoored. She isn’t used to leading, to taking the reins, but he’s put them in her hand, and she feels them there, weighty, in the tug of his heavy hand on hers. They walk mostly silently up to mama’s house; both of them, she suspects, a bit sore from the arguing, and a bit sorer at not wanting to continue the arguing.

She listens to the thick _stomp-stomp_ of his boots on the ground; no snow falling now, so perhaps he really has _reconsidered_. She looks at him, and he betrays nothing: just clear-eyed, following the path. It’s a short walk—Hermes’ little spot is close to mama’s, a neat middle-ground between the heavens and the hells.

Takes only a few minutes ‘til the town fades away, a few minutes more until she’s leading her husband between corn stalks half-a-meter high through a shortcut all her own, and she forgets ‘til they’re half-in that it might not be so easy for him to walk through the stalks, but when she looks to his side, well, they just part like silk for them both, don’t they? Something of the earth in him after all, though it ain’t an aspect he’s altogether encouraged, the seeding and the sowing. Much more focused on the reaping, her man. The taking.

Not tonight, she thinks. Not tonight. And then she wonders how far she can take that—how much control he’s willing to _give_ her. He hasn’t said a word since abruptly agreeing to go, and she wonders if that isn’t just a sort of _psych-her-out_ move, or, even if it’s genuine, just how much freedom he’s giving her.

“Lights out,” he says; he sounds surprised, when they finally pass through the field and into mama’s yard.

“Mama ain’t the type to be up so late,” she says; that was always her, her who slunk out late at night, on account of meeting himself at a time when the sun was not so bright in his eyes (sensitive, even then) and also on account of wanting some sense of modesty, to be with him when mama herself couldn’t hear Persephone getting her skirts rucked up, with his hair sticking out from between her legs in mama’s blackberry bushes. She’d never been a quiet one, and he’d been a _very_ good teacher; held her up on top of him and let her sing high and trembling notes, made her come so hard she couldn’t walk for hours, just pleasuring her with his mouth over and over again; he himself was a more quiet man, who at best might grunt when she wrapped her fingers around his cock, stroking him this way and that in the clueless nature of an eager teenager while he sent her into orbit with the skilled tongue of an older man. “Ought to remember that,” she says, thinking of a far more lecherous thing entirely.

His eyes flicker towards her. “Might have changed her ways. After she knew.”

“You think she wants to know about _us_?” She scoffs. “You wanna know about _your_ mama’s sex life?”

“No.” He stops abruptly at the doorway, swallows; seems nervous, somehow, though she can’t fathom why. Wasn’t like mama had hexed him; her mama wasn’t his biggest fan, but he had the right to be here, and she wasn’t so much a stickler not to recognize that.

“She’s a sound sleeper,” Persephone snaps. “You can make me scream bloody murder and she won’t wake, not a second.” That’s not entirely true; mama is a deep sleeper, but even she has her limits. However, mama is also good at pretending to ignore something that’s going on if she doesn’t want to notice: don’t ask why, don’t ask how. Goes for mothers as much as it does for brothers. “C’mon.” She tugs his hand; he comes with her but barely, full of resistance, like he’s a sack of potatoes she’ll have to fireman carry over her shoulders.

He says nothing; kicks off his shoes in the corner, which is atypical but she understands why he does it: signposting. Those big old rattler boots are his own kind of warning to her mama, that he’s taken up nesting here and she’d best tread with caution. Not, she has to admit, a bad idea; a good sign if he’s willing to part with his boots that he’ll be willing to stay the night, stay for breakfast maybe. She slithers out of his leather coat while he’s throwing off his suit jacket; both get hung on mama's coat rack, next to a parka Persephone has never seen her mama wear on account of her lifestyle choices. She bends down and tosses off her own boots next, right on next to his, and gives him a look that is a right and proper _look_.

“C’mere,” she mutters, grabs him close and kisses him deep, a nice make-out where Hermes can’t yell at them. She moans loud into his mouth and his lips wander, go down to the necklace, licking at it and kissing her shoulders. He pulls at her dress and she dances away, giggling. The look on his face betrays him; he’s _hungry_, he wants her, and she’s pretty sure if she bent down over the table that he’d be in her in just a second, no more than that. And on another day, that might be a fun way to spend the night, but Persephone has more important things in mind. She’s driving tonight. She grabs a bottle of wine, and a bottle of olive oil too; he raises an eyebrow. She just shakes her head, grabs his hand. She pulls him up the stairs. He follows behind mutely, and she does not turn to look behind. They've learned one thing, at least, from Orpheus.

She takes him into her bedroom, opens the door and lets him walk in first. Feels strange to see him there, and her breath catches as he sits on her bed. She didn’t know how much she wanted this until she saw it. “Smaller,” he mutters; it’s true, mama's bed for her is much, much smaller. Not meant to be shared, never has been until tonight.

“Cozy's nice,” she says, straddling his thighs. He is not a man, it must be said, for the subtleties. “Room enough.”

“Hm,” he says, and then he kisses her. His lips slide on hers and he does remember, now, how to kiss her on a warm summer night (and it is, she knows, a warm summer night again; she is a little wet, a little sticky with humid desire baked into her pores). His lips slide over hers with expert grace; she fiddles with his tie, hands on his big neck, bullfrog thick and warbling with a soft groan. He breaks the kiss, fiddles with his tie. Loosens it. Tosses it off. Starts toward the buttons. She thinks of him playing with his tie on the stairs, acting a fool with his little canary following behind, and her belly curdles. She doesn’t want to see his skin – not yet.

She tightens her grip on his neck. “This is _my_ dance. I’m leading.”

“What?” He isn’t thinking with his head, or at least not his larger one. It comes out as a thin whisper; _what? What now_? Not that it could come out as anything else with her hands clamped tight around his throat.

He tries to get air; she doesn’t let him. He looks up, unsure, she thinks, if the choking is part of the fun or if he should be afraid; his expression is caught somewhere in the middle.

_“I didn’t say you could undress,” _she hisses. She lets go, then squeezes again, hears the _hick_ of his throat as he swallows, tries to breathe. The lack of oxygen doesn’t make his dick any less hard, she notes. She grinds into him a few times, an elaborate push-pull. She grinds her hips and her hands squeeze at his neck; she draws back, she releases him, and then she does it again, and again. The addictive _gasp _of air he makes isn’t, she thinks, entirely for oxygen.

“You-want-my-tie-on?” comes out of his mouth too fast, unusually stumbling in his words, and for a half of second she wonders if this was what he was like before her; he had to have a teacher once upon a time, too. He starts to reach for it when she slaps his hand. She doesn’t hold back on the slap and the look on his face says _this is_ _confusing_. The very, very hard dick underneath her, however, says _this is really hot._

“No,” she says; she doesn’t see any marks at his throat but her own, and those she likes. “On your back.”

She shoves him for emphasis but he doesn’t need it; he’s scrambling back, laying himself out like a particularly tasty snack, and she scrambles up on top of him despite herself, opens that big belt and helps him out of his obviously painful tent. “Oh,” he groans.

She takes him carefully in her hand; she won’t admit it to anyone, but she does inspect him carefully, looks for any songbird lipstick caught on him. Girl likes dark lipstick and Persephone knows that shit stains from experience.

“Still meets your standards?” he asks; his hand goes into her hair. Obvious what he expects is going to happen; she isn’t of a mind to prove him wrong. She’ll have to butter him up pretty slick to get him to give her what she ultimately wants, something so vital that he hasn’t given it to anyone else before. A blowjob isn’t the worst place to start.

She doesn’t bother to take him nicely or let him get used to it, just shoots him a heated flash of her eyes before she swallows the head of him down; doesn’t bother to move her teeth out of the way much, either. He’s used to it and he likes a bit of pain all things aside. He hisses; rattlesnake in her throat jumping to the quick. She lets him slide in a little deeper; hard to take him all the way, on account of his size, but he’s been a bit too long without, she thinks, because he responds by shoving just a bit more in. Not a lot of control in him; hot. Her air supply cuts and she holds him there, sucking at his cock while her head swims; she holds it ‘til she start feeling more of a low than a high, then expels him.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, while she's panting, trying to get her breath. He's very gently touching her hair, not tugging; his hand only knots tight when she does her best to lazily circle the head with her tongue; her hands form a familiar pattern that leaves him thrusting into her palm. Lightly, but thrusting, which he only does when he doesn’t have his full control. He _wants_, she thinks; wants a _lot_. It’s going to be an all-night affair. Good.

She moves her fingers slowly around his thighs, breaking the hold on his cock to keep the game going. She keeps her mouth working him, working him as he likes it; hard and fast, then cooling down and circling back. She slowly works one finger lower, past his balls and straight down his taint; he doesn’t protest when she rubs at the skin there, then dips a finger lower. He bristles a bit, but not enough to complain, not with what she’s doing with her mouth.

The noises she makes are close to degenerate and she hopes to Aphrodite above that mama ain’t listening to this. The wet suckling noises are turning her on almost as much as his face, red with ecstasy and reduced to writhing on her bed. She cups his balls and debates suckling them, then does; first the left, then the right. He moans and she doesn’t give him time to adjust before she takes him deep as she can, holds him until she’s dizzy once, twice; thinks she’ll do it again, but one look at his red face, close to the brink already, and she backs off.

Her head is reeling as she scrambles up and off the bed. She looks at him, his clothing ridiculously wrinkled, in a state that he wouldn’t be caught dead in for anyone but her. Her chest catches.

She _loves_ him. Even as impossible as he is.

“Hm?” he sounds half gone; she sheds her dress and tosses it in the corner; decides to leave the necklace and only the necklace on. One of his hands goes down, squeezes his cock; she slaps it away.

“What?” he mutters, annoyed; she drags his arms up over his head.

“No touching yourself.” He whines, the noise unusually high and reedy. She shoots him her best bedroom eyes, straddles his chest – he offers no resistance – and leans down to whisper in his ear. “You’re coming _in me_.” He nods, tries to rise up and she knows what he wants, wants to slink over her like the big man he is, wants _in_ and wants it now, but she tosses her arms over his, keeps him nailed down to the bed.

“What are you doing?” he croaks. She doesn’t answer, just keeps her hands in his as she leans down, leans down past that big chest.

“Do you remember when you first came to me?” She licks at his neck, at the marks she’s put there. Sucks at his skin; let his workers look and see her mark. He doesn’t offer resistance.

“Yes.” No doubt in his voice, no waiver.

“Hat in your hands,” she murmurs. She remembers it, all black, that hat in his hands, and him too, all in black, like a funerary crow. And he was mumbling, desperate. He’d never looked more beautiful.

“Yes.”

“You begged me,” she says. “You begged me, on your bended knee.”

“I did.” His eyes don’t look away. “Desperate man.”

“You said you would worship me as your queen,” she says; his eyes sparkle with a rarely seen amusement, and he smiles. He had worshipped her alright, and like she had any chance of ever losing him after he’d undone her skirts and showed her just what a god could do a goddess. That tongue, she thinks, built fucking empires.

“Do it again,” she demands, and he nods; his hands move forward, and help her sit on top of his face, and then she has to bite her lips because he goes _hard_ right away, sucking on her clit like a man possessed; she whimpers, grinds her cunt right into that big mouth right away, iron mouth, _fuck_. He’s ready for it and he likes it, which is a damn miracle because scuttlebutt among goddesses is most of their menfolk don’t go for such. More’s the pity, but gods are damn selfish and goddesses, too; hard to find a lasting relationship among their kind. One of his hands fights its way up her sides, grabs one of her breasts with, frankly, an almost boyish grab.

She lets him; laughs even, touches his hand, too, makes him hold on while she bucks over his mouth. Warm and full of power, is himself, his hands callused but never, ever rough. He licks at her slit, makes her moan and shift, and she leans back, lets herself get pulled along for the ride. She's commanding this ride but she's willing to allow him _some_ control, at least at this. He's good with that tongue.

“Fuck,” she whispers; she drops his hand and caresses his silver hair. He circles back to her clit, dancing around but never quite landing on it, each soft swipe of his tongue sending her higher into the atmosphere.

He’s _very_ good at this. She moans appreciatively as he licks like his life depends on it. He speeds up, hand dropping to pull her hips down as his tongue shifts, the nub of it opening her up with no resistance. She’s damn wet, so wet for him. “Lover,” she cries out, “Lover.”

He grunts an acknowledgment, nothing more. His grunt is considerably louder when she reaches behind her and grabs his cock, but unlike her first forays into this, she knows what she's doing and his moan is considerably louder once she starts working him, a vibration that shakes her thighs. She strokes him a few times, gets him close, then stops, makes him wait.

He does no such thing. He shifts again, sucks on her clit until she sees stars, and one of his hands pulls her up, then slides in her cunt. She cries out; she’s close. He slicks a finger on her wetness, then pulls it back, and, to her surprise, wiggles it against her ass, slowly working it in.

“Fucking hell,” she whimpers; his finger is _big_ and between his tongue sampling every inch of her cunt and his finger eagerly fingerfucking her ass, she's sure she's not going to last long.

He chuckles, and she can tell he’s pleased with himself, with this new invention. His finger crooks down deeper into her and she screams as his tongue worships her clit, oh fuck, oh _fuck_, and what she wants to do is tell him she’s gonna come but she only gets as far as grabbing his head before she's overcome, wailing with a high moan. Wicked man doesn’t give her a second to recover, either, just keeps going at it like a dog after a bone, licks up every drop of her. When she was a younger thing, just seduced, he’d not stop even after she came, making her do it more than once, running her throat ragged from screaming, and she can tell he intends to do the same tonight, already has his tongue lapping at her folds, no stopping. She taps him.

“Stop.” He does. She moves away, shifts as much as she can to lay at his side. She gives him a good tug a couple more times; he wipes his frankly soaked face on his sleeve (which, let it be said, is probably ruined, but she can’t find it in herself fo regret how it became so). Then he turns toward her, and nudges at her cheek. She turns the nudge into a kiss, still jerking at his cock for a few more moments.

He breaks apart from her after a moment; breathing heavy, eyes soft, he's a beautiful sight. “Time for clothes off?” he asks. “I wanna – wanna be bare in ya.” He smiles, and it’s a wicked thing, boy, a good wicked one. “Put a baby in ya, maybe.”

She’s nervous about seeing or unseeing; doesn’t mind the latter much, but seeing the songbirds little claws dance across his back will hurt. Still, she can’t ask him to fuck through his pants _again_; zipper isn't, she imagines, a pleasant caress. She nods. He shifts off the bed and she watches as he undoes the vest, shifts it from his shoulders. He tosses it on the floor, clicks off his suspenders and she swallows, turns away. She hears the metallic _thunk_ when those hit the bed, still attached in the back of his trousers. His fingers thumb at the buttons and the silver of his shirt goes off; she doesn’t dare to look at the wide splay of his back, staring instead at his forearm, her name still written in black cursive on it. That had been one of his first desperate moves, long ago; she wonders what the songbird might have felt, her name on that big arm, and she swallows, and she pities her all over again. Poor girl.

He stands, tosses down the rest quickly, pants and underpants and sock garters and only he himself knows what else kicked to her floor; he lays back and she looks up at the ceiling, doesn’t respond when he tries to tug at her.

“Come here,” he says; she doesn’t. He sighs.

“I need a minute.” She finds herself saying, takes a deep breath, tries to prepare herself, tells herself _the girl means nothing to him_, tells herself _you're still the favorite_.

“Not appealing to you?” He asks. “Not like you to play shy.”

She was _never_ shy, certainly not around him. He hadn’t been the creepy uncle, loitering at her skirts when she was a little thing. But when she’d gotten older, grown to the point a girl would be might curious of a boy, their orbits did not so much align as come crashing together. She’d pursued him like a nymph, bold little touches, giggles, wicked little jokes that weren’t really jokes. By the time he was giving her her first kisses, spilling his seed on her body – and boldly eating up those seeds too, always a _bold_ girl, her – well, he may have offered the hand, but Hades certainly had some signals she was interested. Or at least should have. He has never been a man of subtlety.

She swallows, looks over at his eyes and thinks: _how can you not know?_ “Nervous.”

“Nothing to be nervous of.” He chuckles, nudges a hand over her collarbone. “Ain’t like we haven’t done this before.”

She wishes he would drop it. Anger makes her bolder, and she dares to glance at his face. “Ain’t nervous about the _act_. I _know_ I’m likely to rock your world three times over.”

“Hm.” Short laugh on his part. “Well, why don’t you get to it, then?”

Don’t ask why, most important rule of their kind. She takes a deep breath and rolls over the top of him; he looks up at her with a half-smirk on his face. “Top again?”

“My night.” She swallows and looks down to his neck, sees only her mark left there. Looks a little lower: bare skin, marred only by the silver hairs of his chest. She takes a deep breath and wiggles herself back up on her throne; he’s ready, as he ever is, in these things. His eyes shut tight when she takes him; takes him deep and she concentrates on his eyes, on the fluttered-shut look of pleasure that crosses his face as she takes him, not all of him but certainly enough to start. She puts her hands on his chest, moves slow; back and forth, that’s them, back and forth.

“Still good for you?” she murmurs, and isn’t sure if she means the movement or herself or the relationship or just all of the above, but he just nods: _yes, yes_. He tries to grab her with his arm, the arm that has her tattoo, or rather her name he dressed his arm up with, and she puts it back down.

“My way.” She goes low on that one, all the way down, and he huffs out a little groan that’s certainly not any sort of protest.

“Kiss me,” she demands, _her-word-is-law_ style, and she bends down, and he does, right expert at it even, lips sliding on hers; his arms go around her back, holding her down – he likes that, likes the closeness of it, the intimacy; she breaks his hold though, and he half-snarls into her mouth but she ignores it. Gotta learn to accept man can’t control _everything_. She slinks back up, shifts her weight and glares down at him, who is so frustrated, despite being inside her, that he is _pouting_. She swallows and looks at him with a panromantic lens, looks for marks on his front and doesn’t see any but her own; she flicks one hand over his nipple, then the other.

“Fuck me,” she grunts; she wants it fast, and this time he seems of an accord; he speeds up at her request, and she speeds with him, her great tits jumping on every thrust, the noise of it wet and hot as fucking hell and _loud_ as sin itself. Time speeds up; she grabs his hands, holds them to her breasts, squeezes his hands down and in the wordless request he understands what she wants, works her breasts through those hands, those ancient hands, hands that tore down the world’s walls and built them up again.

“Love ya,” he whispers, charmingly boyish, when she leans in over him, letting him grab her hips and really help hammer that cock home. The intimacy of it nearly does her in faster than his cock; something warm spreads in her belly at it, at the words and the kiss that follows, on her cheek and charmingly chaste.

“Love you too,” she says, and oh fuck, sometimes it is that simple even if nothing else about them is simple at all. She knows they’re going to be at one another’s throats again soon enough – baby or not, they’re never of a mind to agree too long, two dogs snarling across the hall, but she does love him and it’s sometimes easier, when he’s in her, to focus on that, on just how much good there is messed up in all the bad. His face crumbles and he brings her close and she doesn’t stop him from holding her as he speeds up. Holds his hands which are holding her hips and almost cries.

“Put a baby in me,” she purrs, and he tries, he does; she sees him close his eyes in focus, breathless huffs, just straight up gasping with effort, and she kisses at his neck in encouragement, and what escapes him is just a long, low moan that can’t be called anything other than primal as he finally surrenders. “Come for me,” she murmurs. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He slows, hips moving in slower circles, and she matches pace, slowly moving back and forth to nurse aftershocks in him.

“Don’t think I have much left,” he admits, sounding drowsy; even gods have their limits, and she can feel him softening; she still waits a moment before pulling out, flopping onto her side of the bed. He curls his arms around her, and she thinks: _here we go again_.

“Didn’t say it was time to cuddle,” she says, as he wiggles into every cleft of her bed, skin-to-her-skin, so close she feels the hair of his legs. His hands circle her belly, rub the skin there absentmindedly.

“Mm.” He yawns in her ear and she turns around so they can see one another. “I’m taking some initiative.”

“I’m deciding the steps to this dance. You know that.”

His eyes darken; despite everything they’ve done, he’s still willing to throw down and fight, and ain’t that just a good display of how impossible he is. “Won’t see you for _months_. Let a man hold his wife.”

“For a couple minutes, no more.” She says, and he huffs, a half-chuckle because he thinks she is joking. She is not joking. “I’m not done with you.”

“Oh?” His hand stays on her belly; he flares all five of his fingers out, the cool ring of the underworld’s sovereignty chilly against her bare skin; he is into the baby idea, she thinks. More than she might have thought, if he is trying to touch it already. “What do you want?” He raises an eyebrow, looks downward. “If you want _that_, be more than a couple minutes.”

“No,” she says. She reaches above him, uncorks the wine by gently forcing the cork up – she might not be able to lock doors in barroom stalls, but there are special talents the Patroness of Plenty has all her own, and one of ‘em is being able to uncork her cup and drink up whenever and wherever she damn well pleases. She takes a log draught of it, passes it to him, who does the same. Licks his lips. Looks awful handsome, and then she kisses his lips too, the slightly sticky taste of mama’s summer press on her lips. 

“So what is it?” He runs a hand down her side, gravitates toward her belly again, an unspoken offer to fill up her tank, so to speak. “Keep at this, wife, and we’ll be loading the dice.”

“The house always wins,” she says with a shrug. Unspoken, of course, is that they and will always be, the masters of the house.

“True enough.” His eyes sparkle; there is an advantage in owning the Final Kingdom; they’ll be there, in the end, still alive when everyone else is gone. Daddy might have gotten heaven, but the golden crown of Olympus was only ever temporary.

Iron, however, lasts forever.

She kisses him once more, a little butter up for what she’s going to say next; it’s new territory, and she can’t imagine he’ll react well to it because Hades is a man of simple things, whose tastes were etched deep in his stone long before she’d ever been born. He takes a little sip of wine and smiles, and it’s cute, and she loves him, and he loves her, and well, brother, what else can one do in such situations but try? “I want your ass.”

He spits out the bit of wine he’s been sipping while she’s talking; it sprays onto her bedsheet and herself, sticky purple exclamation point. “What?!”

She grabs the wine bottle, puts it back on the nightstand, and shoves him down underneath her. He doesn’t resist her, but she’s pretty sure only because he is stunned. Still, he lets her reach the olive oil, and he doesn’t glance away when she opens the bottle.

“Your ass,” she says, plainly. “You took my virginity. I can’t be your _first_-first, but I’m betting you’ve never given that up.”

“No,” he growls. She can see the panic on his mouth, the sweat that dots his brow. She wipes at it out of habit, smiles, and cuts of his argument before he can do more than draw a bit of it on his breath.

“Be a nice token of your desire to start over. The first time I gave you mine; this time you’ll give me yours, hm?” She leans down, kisses his ear, always a weakness; and he lets her do it, and she does take her time on it: gentle nibbles, soft whispers. “I want you,” she says, as she withdraws; the twitch of his cock at her thigh tells her that, at least, has some effect.

“It’s not – “ he frowns at her, head tilted; confused. “You’re a _woman_.”

“And you’re a man.” She runs her hands down his chest, figures flattery can only help her. “Big man, too.”

“You’re my _wife_!” He says, incredulous. This is given in a choked alarm, and she nods patiently.

“Yes. My husband, too. Handsome old man, and all mine.” She grazes her fingers lightly down his chest at the _mine_; his cock stirs more than a little at that, and she leans a hand back to slowly tug at his other head for half a second.

“You don’t even – “ He shakes his head, foggy; she’s good at handling him. She offers a soft _hmm_? And nothing more, just loosely running her fingers over the tip of him, showing her appreciation. “You don’t have a _cock_,” he finally gets out, but he’s losing the battle: she can see it in the curve of his smile.

“I can make one.” She draws a chip of wood off the bed to illustrate; curves the piece of wood several times over until it’s a blunt, rounded little object, no more than the breadth of two of her fingers.

“But I’m your…” He frowns. “A man penetrates a woman. That’s how it goes.”

“Sometimes.” She runs her hand over his cocks, tries to keep his mind from racing in a million directions as it does so often. “You and I ain’t never been conventional, though. And I do love your ass.” It is true that it is a nice one, for a male; not, perhaps, large, but muscular and hard as the rest of him is.

His cheeks glow slightly in the dark at her commentary; she files that away for later. “We don’t have to tell anyone,” she says. “_If_ you’re embarrassed.”

“Of course I would be embarrassed!” He hisses. “Even Zeus would not sink so low as to be _penetrated_.”

“Many people are penetrated; some men, many women. You think them all gutter-trash?” He mulls her answer with a proud rut of his chin, staring at her. She drags her hand away from his cock, sighs. Evidently he needs to think clearly through this bit. “I’ve been penetrated. By you, even! Am I less to you now than I was as that teenage fidget, all gangly knees clattering around your ears screaming _don’t stop, uncle Hades, please don't stop_—”

“You know,” he says, quietly, “what I mean.” Men, she thinks; so silly. For a man as old as he is, Hades has spent zero effort trying to move with the times; some of his morals, she thinks, are stuck in the positively ancient. An eye for an eye; an ass, somehow, the fountain of all manliness.

“It would mean a lot to me.” She tells it true, there. “I’ll be gentle. Not about hurting you.” She runs a hand down his chest, gently strokes him as his breath goes up, down, up down; tense as hell, in a place where he should feel safe beyond all telling. It makes her a bit sad, to tell you the truth; even here, he doesn’t quite trust as much as he should.

“Humiliating me, then,” he says, quiet. “Over the girl, I assume.” She snarls, and its not a nice sound, no, not at all; can’t imagine what Mama is thinking if she overhears all this. But Persephone is tired of the way his mind works, sometimes, the venomous underpinning of it: if he did her wrong, she needs to do it back. Zero recognition that she’s trying to forgive him for that – which is _damn hard_, thank you very much, and naturally, he gives her zero recognition for it. She only wants to share in an intimate experience for them both where, for once, for _once_, she has the power. It’s a simple thing, what she wants, everywhere but in his mind.

“Not about humiliating you,” she spits. “You’re impossible.”

Quietly, a response; he looks away, out the window, into the moonlight, where he can’t see a damn thing, so it must remind him of every home he ever knew before he went crazy on the lights. Maybe it’s as alien to him now as everything else. “I know,” he says. “I know.”

“All I want is to share in some intimacy with you that’s just us,” she runs a hand down his sides, he still won’t look at her. “That’s all. Something you won’t have with anyone else.”

“This doesn’t count? This whole evening?” He huffs out a breath. “I’ve come to your _bed.” _Like it was that fucking hard for him, to walk up these steps, to stay in these sheets. What’s wrong with her bed? Ain’t as big as theirs and certainly her sheets aren’t measured in the thousands of threads, but it's plenty nice and he himself did not always have such caviar tastes.

“Is it really such a chore for you, to fuck a pretty woman in her own bed?” He looks at her with eyes narrowed, king cobra ready to strike, _yes sir_. She glares back.

“No control here,” he says, quiet, and her stomach drops out at the realization of why he finds it so hard; this isn’t his ground, and she forgets, sometimes, how little he belongs to any realm but his own. “Not used to that.”

“You’re safe here, lover... All I’m asking you to put yourself in my control.” She cups his silver hair, gently tries to remember she loves him even if he’s a stubborn ass. “Don’t you trust me?”

“More than anyone.” That response comes back, automatic but still, she thinks, as true as can be for him. Which is sad, because trusting her more than anyone doesn’t mean much when he doesn’t trust anyone completely. “I’m having a…a child with you,” he mutters, cheeks slightly colored. “Proof enough, ain’t it?”

“That’s a different thing. Not bound up in the intimacy of our bed.” She gently caresses that chin, caught in a proud mull. “That’s taken a hit as of late.” Because of the girl, she does not say. Truthfully that hit occurred long before: sex is easy between them, but making love is right hard. He looks at her, eyes hard; she drops her hand. She looks away, desperate for answers he cannot give her.

He places his old hands in hers and she looks back at him; his eyes look _old_ – exhausted, tired. He squeezes her hands. “Love ya,” he says. “I do.”

“Love you too.” She squeezes his hands back. “Love you always, so you know. Even when you’re an impossible jerk.”

He smirks, a warm chuckle in his throat. Says nothing for a long moment. Then: “Where do you want ...?”

So quiet, in fact, that she cannot quite be sure she’s heard him for a full minute. He waits for her, respectfully, rubs her palms with his. “Oh,” she says. “Oh.”

“Well?” He looks toward the window.

“On your back, I think. Be easier if I can – can see what I’m doing.” He frowns and slowly turns over.

“My knees?” He asks quietly. “Or – I don’t, I don’t know.”

“Yes,” she admits; best to be direct. “On your knees.” 

He shifts, back sloped down, face in the pillow, ass nice and high. “Thank you,” she says, quiet, to which he offers nothing more than a simple grunt.

She is gentle to start with; rubs her hands over his back, slow and sweet, a long massage of skin so tense she can feel each knot of him; she feels each bit of tension of this man, this beautiful man. “Easy,” she murmurs. “Easy. We’ll take it slow. All the time in the world.”

“That’s not true,” he mutters, bitterness spit into every word. “Never enough time, us.”

She doesn’t answer that, just reaches for the olive oil and takes it; slathers a bit on her hands and works it over his back, all the way down to his glutes.

“Getting me messy,” he complains, half into the pillow. She snorts and reaches her hand around, grabs and gently squeezes at his cock in a way that makes him harden in her hand itself.

“You just wait,” she murmurs. She adds a little bit olive oil to her smallest finger and slowly works it around his entrance. He grunts, whines lightly as she presses inward. She teases him with the touch, just a slow and gentle circle, adding oil as she goes. His skin is clean, soft; she gently works it in just at the tip lightly, and he grimaces into the cover.

“Okay?” She murmurs; she strokes his back with her free hand.

“Keep going.” He shakes his head. “Just strange.” She nods, slowly dips it further in, then out. He doesn’t lean into it, but he doesn’t object as much; a grunt is as close as he comes, and she watches his face carefully as she works it, back and forth, back and forth. He’s tight, made tighter with anxiety, and she worries he won't ever quit holding his doors shut, proverbially.

“Relax,” she says. “Relax.”

He nods, reaches down, tugs at his own cock, and she frowns; moves her free hand over his and gently helps pull his down – he hisses – and off. 

“What?” His voice is irritated.

“You don’t touch yourself until I tell you to,” she mutters; she doesn’t want him working himself so fast he comes before she’s worked her dildo right into his ass.

She plunges her pinky in faster, lets him get used to the tug of it, the pull; it’s not like what she thought, the ring of muscle there bending with her finger, and it’s hot, she thinks, seeing him bent down like this, mostly at her mercy. "Just like that," she says, "keep taking it just like that."

He loosens up a bit; she doubles the sensation, working her hands over his thighs.

“Oh, _now_?” he mutters; she just smirks. “Didn’t think that was allowed.”

“You’re allowed to enjoy it, just ain’t lettin’ you pop before I get in you.” she mouths, adds a bit more oil and goes for her index finger, which glides in with less resistance that she thought. She works him a few times with that, just in and out, then after that, circles and moves her index and middle combined into him. He jumps a bit at the size, but it’s quickly forgiven in favor of her free hand moving up his thighs, fondling his balls. He’s always been weak to her touching him like this, and she’s gotten it down to a science exactly how he likes it. She squeezes lightly as she goes deep, and the groan that comes out is subterranean.

“That’s it,” she says. “Good.”

He murmurs something – she isn’t sure what, and she curls her finger, slowly moving it around from side to side inside him. She strokes something that feels slightly spongy to the touch, and the effect on him is surprising: he sucks in a harsh breath, looks back at her. She probes at it again and he winces, a soft groan to his breath.

“Hurt?” she murmurs.

“No.” She presses at it again and he whimpers, eyes shut tight and hot and she decides, at that moment, she needs him, and she needs him _now_.

She fumbles for the bit of wood she was manipulating earlier, forms and shapes it until it’s roughly the size of her twinned fingers in both length and width – he’ll bail, she thinks, if it’s a bit _too_ big; better to start small. If he likes it, well...she smirks. Can always go bigger next time. After a moment’s deliberation, she makes a nub on her end of the base – no reason not to have a bit of fun herself. Now his powers are plenty useful, of course, but her – she’s got her own ways and means. Can’t lock a bathroom stall with the power of her mind, no, but she can make an awful nice harness to fit that cock nice and snug out of vines sprouting from her bit of wood, yes sir, yes _sir_. For a nature goddess, ain’t nothing more powerful than being wrapped in the fruits of her own vine.

She douses her dildo with a copious amount of oil – ah yes, that’s the stuff, that’s the _stuff_ – and then she’s on him, dildo pressed right on that pretty little ring of muscles.

“Be gentle,” he mutters.

“Be as gentle as you were with me,” she says, and he was, she’ll give him that. Spent a long time between her legs with his mouth before he ever opened up the possibility of his cock, and she was so wet she only felt a normal amount of a virgin’s distressvwhen he tore through her, despite his size , and he’d soothed her so nice and fine, and she thought then: ain’t he just a gentleman.

And sometimes he is, still. And sometimes a bastard, too, but she is tryin’ to keep her eyes on the good times and not the bad, and so instead of ramming herself home, she takes it slow, adjusts his legs a little further apart for better control, and takes her time caressing him when she gets him where she wants him. When she does, she circles her cock around that tight ring and pops just the head of it in. Watching it shift into him, just that little bit, is agonizingly hot, and she wishes there were two of him, so that one could be inside her, and the other could be penetrated by her.

“Fuck, lover,” she mutters into his skin. “_Fuck_. You know how beautiful you look like this?”

He doesn’t respond, uncharacteristically; his cheeks are flushed and he’s got his eyes closed, laying back on the pillow. She doesn’t move any deeper, just massages his back, offering cooing words and gentle touches. “Might hurt a bit, but I promise it’ll be worth it,” she says. “Won’t even get marks from the blackberry bush on your back this time.”

“Was worth it,” he says, through a tight face. “Don’t mind a little pain.”

“Mmm.” She pushes in a bit more and he gasps, laid out against her pillow; he’s sensitive like this, zero barriers, and for a man with as many walls as he has, it’s something to see him with his mouth open, eyes shut tight, something between a grimace and a groan caught there, caught between heaven and hell.

“You look so fucking good,” she snarls. “Do you know how hard it is to resist sliding all of this in you? Seeing you sink down on me?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then mumbles something she can’t catch, and it’s spit out so forcefully she’s sure it’s some form of insult – to her or himself, she isn’t sure. “What’s that?”

He presses his face back into the pillow for a good few seconds before turning back to her. “Said feels like that every time I’m with ya.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, ain’t you the charmer.”

He smirks a bit, or at least in as much as she can see from his big old body blocking the way. “Feels the same for me. Every time I see you. Just want you to drive me crazy,” she says; he’s relaxing a bit, body getting used to it, and she sinks another inch downward into him. “And you succeed one way or the other, more often than not.”

He doesn’t say anything, just lets her press her hips all the way home. “That’s the whole thing, lover,” she says, wiggling her hips over his so he can feel her, flesh on flesh. “How do you feel?”  
  
“Full,” he grunts. She laughs, pulls out just a bit and gently tips herself back home again; feels different, being on this side of it, and she wonders if the same is true for him.

“Not that big, you know, just a couple fingers. Starter cock, you know.” She pulls back, then leans forward as she thrusts, capturing his cock in her hands. Takes a couple failed attempts, but she gets her hand around it, and he groans mighty appreciatively when she starts working him with her oily fingers: root to tip, back again, hard squeeze at first and then barely whisper-soft. “Not like you yourself. This thing…” She squeezes him heavy, and he groans, and she snaps her hips out and in again and he groans _more_ and the sound is just…intoxifying. “Well, it’s a godly thing, this cock.” She kisses his back as she fucks him and he just makes little noises as she does; she leans in and he lets her, and she moves her hips and forth and after a little bit, he starts moving back and forth with her.

Takes them a couple minutes to find a rhythm, but they do: Persephone goes in and he leans away; she pulls out and he pulls inward, and it’s different from the normal but it’s a mighty nice new thing and she enjoys the push-pull of it, and then she presses in a little faster and he moans and she does it again and he gasps heavy and she realizes, well, they’ve got something good here.

Now at this point, Persephone gives good and proper thanks for the forethought to put that clitoral nub in, because holy _hells_ below does it feel good as she starts to hit a rhythm with him, that magic little nub just lighting up her bundle of nerves like Saturnalian sambuca poured right into her veins. She’s warm and this is hot and looking at his face – oh, fuck, his face.

It’s red, bright red, eyes shut but relaxed, pleasure-face now with eyes half-shut and mouth wide and just these little _ah, ah, ahs, _coming out, one after another, every time she dives in. He sounds like a chimney bellows, he does, a deep _ahh_ on each thrust. His hands are bound up in her sheets and she presses _hard_ and he moans like her own personal whore and Persephone has never seen a damn thing more beautiful than Hades at her mercy.

“Seph,” he mumbles; she snaps her hips into him and he groans something long and fierce.

“You like that, lover?” She purrs into his ear, and he just pants, and he is pushing back against her more and she is fucking him, she is _fucking _him, and a slick heat builds through her, and she isn’t sure if it’s the clitorial nub she’s placed or just the sheer fucking power of fucking _him_, but it’s working, whatever, it is, and she pushes his hips down and fucks herself into him, hips moving so fast she’s sure there’ll be a bruise on one of them tomorrow.

“Fuck,” she says, loud, sweaty. “Oh, fuck.” His moaning is loud now, just one broken loud wail that’s filled and refilled every time she’s dipping her hot little cock into him, and she practically falls into him from snapping her hips so hard, and he’s moaning and moaning and all she can do is mount him, and its not enough, she wants to give him more pleasure, more.

And so she gives him the last thing she can. “You can touch,” she murmurs, and he groans, beyond words now, straight up fucked out of words, and his hand tugs at his cock and it takes her some fumbling but she gets her fingers around his so they can work him together, just two hands coming together to get him off, and he all but shouts as she helps stroke him, still hammering his tight little ass all the while.

He’s hard, so hard, she realizes; she recognizes in the way his legs shake that he’s close, and she’s so close too, and she runs her hand around the head of that big, fat cock and squeezes it hard, and he shivers and he gasps, and that is it. She feels it swell around her, feels the almost violent shutter that goes through him – not just his cock, his full body – as he comes with an almost ragged shout, his voice rougher than normal as he squirts out, and for a man whose come twice in the night already, it’s still a quite respectable amount; she might have to get another towel.

She keeps humping him through the aftershock, even as his body starts to go a bit limp in post-coital ecstasy. It only takes her a few more pushes until she goes over the cliff herself, coming with a high whine in her throat.

She pulls out of him slow – very slow – and stares down at him as he turns over to face her.

“Come here,” he says, and his voice brooks no bargaining. She shrivels the vines, shrinks the cock back to just a chip of wood and tosses it on her nightstand, then curls up in his arms, holds him tight as hell.

“Think we can do that when I’m all swollen up with your baby?” She whispers into his ear; he just huffs, an odd half-laugh on his breath.

“You’d only be three months along, when I come back. Barely showing at all.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Answer enough,” he says. “Didn’t say no.”

“Didn’t say yes, neither,” she says, but she's too tired to argue the point. He pulls her head closer to his chest, and she feels the beat of that old, old heart as she lays her head upon his hard shoulder.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and she supposes that’s change enough. She closes her eyes, and for once, drifts off quick, before she can even thank him for sharing the night.

* * *

She wakes up what feels like minutes but must be hours later, because the sun is up, the lights are shining, and Mama is at the foot of her bed – _and Mama is at the foot of her bed._ She reflexively startles, throws a blanket toward him to cover himself, then realizes with even further startling that he is not in bed and all she has gone and done is exposed Mama to her titties, and then she realizes that Hades has truly gone and done a runner after all, the ass, because he ain’t here when she wakes up and _she is a much nicer sight to wake to than a boring machine, thank you very much. _

Mama sighs and shakes her head, then sits on her bed. “Your husband is downstairs,” she says, voice suspicious. “Making _eggs_. In his…” she mimes his suspenders, and Persephone has to stifle a laugh; she can't imagine her Mama in business casual.

“You like eggs,” she says, though it is a curious thing, as Hades never has. Chickens get sacrificed to them, sure, but he himself has always preferred the blood and the meat, more so than the egg.

Mama snorts, kicks at something on the ground that she realizes after a minute is either her clothes or his jacket. “Ain’t makin’ em for _me_,” she says. “Man’s never made me breakfast a day in my life.” She looks at Persephone, a spark of something mischievous in her eye. “Apple pancakes, too.”

Now Hades, it must be said, is not in particular a great cook; he does know how to cook on account that he does so himself half the year, but only because he is too ornery a sort to allow dependence upon another such person. He has made her apple pancakes perhaps five times in her life, four of which were apologies for bringin’ her early, and the remaining instance their anniversary of some type or another, though as far as the celebration Persephone has little idea after so long a time.

“Well,” she says, awkwardly, “suppose I should thank you for allowing him usage of the stove. I’ll pay back whatever ingredients he’s used – “

Mama waves her hand, shakes her head. “We can afford it. Isn’t like he’s demandin' you down, suppose that’s good enough.” She sniffs. “Least he can is make my baby pancakes after what he puts you through.”

Mama eyes her bed with an eye that makes her uncomfortable, then sighs. “Get dressed girlie. He’s waitin’, and I don’t want him lingerin’ and deciding you look better in the dark.”

And so she does.

It’s an awkward breakfast – Hades visibly sweats but kisses her, in her mama’s house, on her cheek, in front of her mama before breakfast, and eats the whole thing between them without a word of insult made plain to her mama, or grumbling about his leaving made plain to her. His hand curls around her belly as he snags her in, and she says, off the top of her head, without any planning at all: “Maybe you should come back a week or two from now. For a visit. Maybe a…” She folds her hands over his, preses both to her belly. “Top-up? Load the dice?” He swallows, nods; she reaches up and kisses him, and watches him as he goes, and he only looks back at her once or twice ‘til he’s gone.

“Well,” Mama says, folding her arms. “Suppose I ought to get your old cradle out.”

“Mama!” She whirls. “You weren’t supposed to listen to—“

“Walls are thin, dearie, and you two are _loud_.” She chuckles, and moves away into the fields. Persephone supposes its peace enough that Mama isn’t lecturing her until the cows come home, and supposes that’s proof enough things between them are okay. Persephone herself, perhaps, spends a few hours extra on her duties as Patroness of Plenty, lets things bloom a bit more than usual; she’s in a good mood, and for once when she hears the high and lonely sound of that train, it’s alright, brother, it’s alright. Complicated noise, that; good and bad in every way, it is.

“Mighty nice garden you’re making,” Hermes drawls; thinking of brothers always seems to draw him out the woodwork, just right out. He hands her a card, all in black; no question of who its from.

_Thought about it. Am OK as per our discussion last night_. It says, and she snorts. Translated from Hadespeak: _you can fuck me up the butt again_, that’s what that says. _I love you_, the bottom line says, and she doesn’t snort at that, been a long time since either of them laid it out plain in text. _Send word when you know, _it finishes, and she smiles.

“So, what’s all this?” Hermes asks, then raises a finger. “Don’t tell me I’m not to know after your little show last night. Lord father above, girl, I nearly went deaf keeping the music up above your wailing.”

“Just new beginnings is all,” she says, eyebrows raised; “tragedy, what happened before, but it’s different this time.”

“I hope so,” he says, quiet. “Been a long time since we had a good beginning in this tale.” She thinks of Orpheus, of Eurydice; thinks of how sweet that started, and how sad it ended, based on one mistake. She hopes that ain't gonna be them, but she can't figure out any way to avoid it except to...keep going. So that's what she'll do. Just keep trying.

She swallows and nods, tucks Hades’ note in her pocket for safekeeping until she gets back to her room.

“Want to wet your whistle, brother?” She asks; she owes him that much, and with the baby coming – or at least, the attempt at coaxing one to come – she has to cut back on what she’s got.

“Sister, I thought you would never ask.” He places his old hand on hers and she loops his arm ‘round her own, walks him through a garden that is greener than its been in many an age.

Now that ain’t to say it’s all fixed; she salivates mighty hard at that drink she pours for Hermes, who is, it must be said, a most contemptibly fine gossip, even more so after he breaks into her good stuff. She limits herself to a bit of water and kicks herself for how lame the taste of it is the whole time around. And she still has thoughts of _what the hell are we doing_, and thoughts of _why are we even together_, and thoughts of_ he is impossible_ and thoughts of _but I miss him, too._ There are still times she thinks of that sober little chickadee, and still times she feels angry, though the anger is more and more dulling into a rock of deep sapphire guilt; she’ll help the girl, she thinks, when she kicks back down, in as much as the patroness of plenty can. Can’t make hell last any less time but there are means of making it pass quicker, and alcohol is one of those means, but so too, of course, is friendship.

And it is not to say that they do not fight and it is not to say that they do not snap, but such is happening less, and she is happy to see him – and happier, too, when her menses do stop, and she is late one week, then two. She sends him word, and he comes, and he just holds her a long while, and there is nothing, she thinks, that works so much as that.

It’s a process, all of it: love and life and family. And Persephone, well, she ain’t been the best at it.

But she’s trying now, and that’s different enough. Flash-point stories are fun, she thinks, but the real yarn – well, that’s in the epics, brother, and Persephone, her story’s an epic.

Ain’t a fast thing or an instant one, but it’s a good one, and Persephone decides she likes it best of them all, even if it takes a mighty long time to tell. But that's alright, brother.

She's got plenty of time.


End file.
